Good Example Of Health Effects Of Smoking Research Paper

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to discuss the different negative health effects of smoking. Included in the discussion are the effects of smoking on the lungs, heart, body cavities and airways, and on the overall health of a person. All in all, it can be summarized that smoking affects nearly every organ in the body and has been the cause of a wide variety of diseases and medical conditions not only in America but worldwide.
Every year, tobacco companies generate huge revenues selling cigarettes and other products that are derived from the tobacco plant to the public. And so every year, they remit a significant portion of those huge revenues to the government in the form of income taxes. Therefore, it can be said that income taxes generated from tobacco sales, comprise a significant portion of a country’s balance sheet. In the case of some countries, especially those that do not have any other lucrative and profitable business industries to rely on, removing the income taxes generated from tobacco companies might be a bad idea because that would mean, at least for some, that they would be running on a deficit (or in some cases a larger than usual deficit).
In a nutshell, tobacco companies constitute a significant portion of most countries that are harboring tobacco corporations’ balance sheet. Needless to say, the income taxes generated from tobacco sales help a country uplift its balance sheet, especially for countries that are running very low on income. This creates a scenario wherein the government and the tobacco companies are the ones who benefit from the huge sales and profit they generate every year. The question now would be, how about the ones on the other side of the equation? How about the people who have been so dependent on if not addicted to tobacco products? Are they getting the same amount of benefit just like the government and the tobacco companies that pay them in income taxes?
The most plausible answer to this question is a no because of one reason and that is smoking leads to negative side effects on an individual’s health. The objective of this paper is to discuss the different effects of smoking in some of the most important organ systems in the body, particularly the pulmonary system, cardiovascular system..
Every time a paid advertisement of a tobacco product or any derivative of the tobacco plant gets aired on television, radio, or even on newspapers, people would most probably hear this warning: cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health. It seems rather ironic that the very people or organizations that encourages people to buy tobacco products are the same ones that gives them (i.e. the people, the target market) warnings not to smoke to much because, as what directly comes from them, buying their products and smoking it is, in fact, dangerous to one’s health. The answer to that question is simple and that is because the government and the tobacco manufacturers themselves know that smoking can lead to negative side effects on a person’s (the smoker) health.
The truth behind the appearance of those warnings is that if only the tobacco companies are the ones who would decide, they would not place those warnings following their highly-costly advertisements . This is because it is somewhat obvious that that would diminish the impact of their ads on the company’s sales. Then why are the companies issuing such warnings right after their product advertisements. The answer is that the government is requiring them to issue those warnings for it too recognizes the health hazards brought about by smoking.
According to studies, smoking, especially chronically, can lead to high mortality diseases like stroke, heart disease, cancer, and serious pulmonary conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD). This has been proven time and again by medical and or clinical literatures whose goal was to determine the negative effects of smoking on an individual’s health.
There are many ways how smoking can negatively affect the body. Whenever a person smokes a cigarette or any tobacco product, he takes in a large number and amount of unnaturally occurring chemicals and carcinogens to the body. What makes smoking worse is that the process of ingesting these harmful chemicals is not just a one-time process. It happens every time a person inhales the smoke coming from the cigarette. Notice that smokers eventually exhale the smoke that they have initially breathed in during the puffing process. The truth is that the smoke coming out of their mouth or nostrils is not the same smoke that they inhaled.
That smoke has already been inside the smoker’s respiratory system. It has already come in contact with the alveoli (the basic functional unit of the lungs which is the primary organ of respiration and the primary organ of the pulmonary and respiratory organ systems); and some of the compounds (i.e. harmful chemicals and carcinogens) that were previously a part of the smoke to be inhaled by the smoker have already been left inside his body. Therefore, every time a person inhales a puff of cigarette smoke, that person is actually depositing harmful chemicals and carcinogens inside his body, particularly in his cardiopulmonary system.
It is important to note that what does not leave the mouth or nose through the process of exhalation in smoking stays inside the body for a while and unfortunately, internal organs such as the lungs and heart, and the connective tissues such as the blood and blood vessels, and the cells are simple not built to process let alone store cigarette smoke and their residues. This only leads to and reinforces the same conclusion that previous literatures about the negative health side effects of smoking.
The first thing that happens when a person smokes is that a mixture of gas that contains chemicals gets released by the burning tobacco inside the cigarette stick. That smoke does not immediately enter the person’s mouth and airways. Instead, the burnt tobacco from the cigarette stick creates a smoke that first scatters around the smoker’s face. The smoke then comes in contact with that person’s eyes, nose, and then later on throat and oral cavity . The most likely response of the body as a result of this initial contact with cigarette smoke in the smoking process is the irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat because as mentioned earlier, the body is simply not designed to deliver and contain, let alone process cigarette smoke.
This is why for persons who just started smoking, especially for first-time smokers, the initial reactions of the bodily structures in their face typically include reddening of the eyes, showing of manifestations of runny nose, and drying of the throat. It is important to note, however, that these symptoms only appear on first-time smokers or at some point those who have just started to regularly smoke. As the body gets used to processing cigarette smoke, it changes .
If there is one part of the body that gets severely affected, in a negative way at that, by smoking, that would be the body’s cavities (i.e. nasal, oral, etc.). The body cavities are some of the first body structures that come in contact with the smoke once a person starts the smoking process. Most body cavities in the body are covered with a small amount of mucus. The purpose of the mucus is to enable sweep tiny foreign objects from the cavity so that it remains open and unobstructed.
The nasal cavity is perhaps the best example that can be used to describe the changes that smoking causes in the body’s cavities. The nasal cavity normally contains a small amount of mucus. However, in an event that irritants start to enter the body via the nasal cavity, the brain immediately sends signals to the mucus glands stationed in or near the nasal cavity to process and release more mucus so that the irritants can be flashed away and so that normal cavity operations can occur. However, as a person smokes continuously, the stimulus, which is the smoke, continuously enters the body cavities (i.e. the nasal cavity) and so a continuous mucus secretion is manifested.
This is especially true for first-time smokers because their body still considers the smoke as an irritant. However, the case may not be the same for chronic smokers. The body’s cavities are often lined by epithelial cells capable of secreting mucus. These are most of the time the smooth and cuboidal epithelial cells. However, as a person becomes a chronic smoker, the epithelial cells lining the cavities get converted from either smooth or cuboidal epithelial cells into stratified cells. Stratified cells are thick epithelial cells that are often built for stress. One simple explanation behind this dramatic change in the epithelial composition of the linings of the body’s cavities as a result of smoking is accommodation. The body recognizes simple recognizes that it must protect the airways from being completely clogged or even damaged during the regular smoking process for chronic smokers and so to do that, it may have decided to change the cells lining the cavities from the ones that are merely capable of secreting mucus to one that is built for stress so that every time the smoke passes through, the smoker would not get the same bodily response that he did when he smoked his first cigarette.
There are also certain studies that suggest that smoking leads to decreased levels of high density cholesterol or what is otherwise known as the good cholesterol; it leads to a slightly reversible elevation in blood pressure; it leads to elevated blood clotting ability; and it leads to the creation of cardiopulmonary symptoms such as shortness of breath, increased fatigability majority of which contributes to increased difficulty in doing activities of daily living and exercise .
The heart is the primary organ of the cardiovascular system because it is the organ that pumps oxygenated blood into the circulatory system. The heart works closely with the blood vessels of the body to deliver oxygenated blood to the muscles and other organs and tissues. A problem in either one of these organ systems would often lead to a serious cardio-circulatory problem. One of the most common cardio-circulatory-related problems that are often associated with smoking is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is “the buildup of fatty substances in the arteries, and is a chief contributor to heart disease” and is considered as the number one killer disease in America .
Smoking has been identified as one of the major risk factors for atherosclerosis. That is, smokers, especially the ones who have been smoking regularly for a large number of years already, are more prone to develop atherosclerosis. The mechanism behind the development of atherosclerosis is often the same as the mechanism that leads to the abnormal conversion of epithelial cells lining the body’s cavities as described in the example above.
There have also been studies that suggest that atherosclerosis may be caused by smoking .The result of atherosclerosis is increased blood pressure because the space that blood normally occupies in a normal circulatory process gets clogged as a result of fat and other deposits. The principle behind blood pressure and blood vessel diameter suggests that smaller diameter blood vessels would generally have higher blood pressures compared to those that have a larger diameter provided that the same volume of blood passes through them. In the case of atherosclerosis secondary to smoking, the blood vessel space becomes narrower than what is considered normal and so the tendency is for the blood pressure to increase.
Atherosclerosis or the presence of it, in turn, serves as a risk factor for a wide range of cardio-pulmonary, and respiratory diseases, the most common of which are stroke or cerebrovascular accident, peripheral artery disease, and coronary heart and artery diseases. Therefore, if there is one side effect of smoking those medical practitioners and more importantly the people who seem to be unable to quit smoking must prevent from developing, that would be atherosclerosis.
There is also sufficient evidence that suggests that the lungs is the organ in the body that gets most affected by smoking. The lung serves as the body’s built-in air filter. As a person inhales air either from his mouth or nostrils, the air enters the lungs. The lungs then work by filtering the oxygen and infusing it with the blood that it receives from the right ventricle of the heart, a process which is medically termed as oxygenation. Whenever a person smokes, he takes in contaminated air inside his body or his lungs in particular. The lungs, in an effort to filter only oxygen in the oxygenation process becomes forced to remove all the harmful chemicals and compounds present in the air that the smoker just inhaled. As a result, deposits of those filtered chemicals and compounds from cigarettes often get left behind as residues inside the lungs.
These deposits accumulate over time until such time that the person’s lungs becomes darker and more contaminated. It is also important to note that the lungs do not filter all the harmful chemicals and compounds present in the inhaled air that the smoker took in. Some of those harmful chemicals and compounds successfully get through the filtration process and actually becomes infused with the oxygen that normally accompanies the blood. One good example would be nicotine. When a person smokes, the lungs do not really filter nicotine. Instead, it enters into the bloodstream and actually gets pumped into the smoker’s systemic circulation together with the oxygen and nutrients that are supposed to be the only components of the blood.
All in all, it can be said that smoking harms nearly every organ in the body and causes a variety of diseases and reduces the overall health of smokers, including second-hand smokers . Therefore, it is really recommended especially for people who are conscious and even protective of their health to quit smoking if they have already started, or to not even try starting a chronic practice of smoking, in order to rule themselves out of the common medical conditions that smokers are usually diagnosed with.

References

American Heart Association. (2015). How Cigarettes Damage your Body. American Heart Association.
Bryant, C. (2015). How does your body digest a cigarette.
CDC. (2014). Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jha, P., & Peto, R. (2014). Global Effects of Smoking, of Quitting, and of Taxing Tobacco. New England Journal of Medicine, 60-68.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2015). How Does Smoking Affect the Heart and Blood Vessels. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
WebMD. (2015). Smoking - What will happen to my body. WebMD.