When people are talking about the detrimental effects of smoking, they often refer to nicotine, but what does this do exactly? A brief explanation is that inhaling nicotine is experienced as a reward by the body through the release of dopamine, which creates a euphoric and addictive effect (for more information about this, see Addictive Substances: Nicotine).

The two most important questions to determine the degree of addiction, are:

How long after waking up do you light the first cigarette?
How many cigarettes do you smoke daily?

If the answers are something like ‘half an hour’ and ‘twenty five or more’ respectively, one is considered to be severely addicted.

People in this category who try to stop, experience serious withdrawal effects, such as irritability, nausea, excessive sweating and even heart palpitations. These withdrawal effects often result in a renewed use of cigarettes.

Health Effects of Nicotine

Besides creating an addiction, nicotine also influences the health of smokers. The risk of cardiovascular conditions and stroke increases significantly. It makes the blood vessels contract, raises the blood pressure, damages the blood vessel walls and makes the blood clot faster. This is the reasons why erectile dysfunction is relatively common in smokers.

Even though the nicotine concentration in cigarettes can be decreased, this won’t help, as smoker will inhale longer and deeper to get their daily dose.

Health Effects of Other Products

Next to nicotine, a lot of other byproducts of cigarettes (tar, carbon monoxide, dioxin and so on) also cause severe health effects. These are responsible for lung cancer as well as mouth and throat cancer, which are caused almost exclusively by smoking.

The filters may prevent some products from being inhaled, the smaller substances that get through, will penetrate tissues deeper. These can cause fertility problems, cardiovascular conditions, bone decalcification, halitosis, teeth discoloration and an increased rate of aging in the skin.

Never Too Late

But it is nice to know that is never too late to stop. Research has shown that those who quit smoking before age 30 can prevent most of these health effects and quitting on age 40, 50 or 60 can lengthen lifespan with 9, 6 or 3 years respectively. The risk of developing cardiovascular conditions decreases after quitting and after 15 years without smoking, this risk is almost back at a level similar to that of non-smokers. The risk of lung cancer remains higher but can be brought back to one tenth of the risk by 20 years of not smoking. So, it is never too late to stop smoking, regardless how long you’ve been smoking.

References

Cornstock, G.W.; Brownlow, W.J.; Stone, R.W. & Sartwell, P.E. (2008). Cigarette Smoking and Changes in Respiratory Findings. American Journal of Epidemiology. 168(7), pp. 802 – 809.
Doll, R.; Peto, R.; Boreham, J. & Sutherland, I. (2004). Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years’ observations on male British doctors. British Medical Journal. 328: 1519.
Yanbaeva, D.G.; Dentener, M.A.; Creutzberg, E.C.; Wesseling, G. & Wouters, E.M.F. (2007). Systemic Effects of Smoking. CHEST. 131(5), pp. 1557 – 1566.