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The Aspects of Smoking Many years ago, smoking was considered alluring habit and it was quite popular to smoke. However, when it was scientifically proved after numerous researches that smoking was the cause of many health problems, the public opinion towards smoking had changed a lot. Over the last 40 years, approximately the number of smokers in the United States has dropped 30 %. Private businesses and all levels of government have jumped on the nonsmoking bandwagon. Almost every state now restricts smoking bands for indoor workplaces. The U.
S. Surgeon General has proposed that America become a completely smoke free society. Despite such progress, tobacco use remains widespread. Today 25 % of American adults smoke. Each year more than 400, 000 of smokers die from the effects caused by smoking. There is also such a group as passive smokers, people who spend a lot of time around smokers.
They also may suffer from smoke. Statistic has proved that more than 50, 000 occur annually among passive smokers. It is also interesting to find our why people smoke. Nicotine Addiction is the primary reason people continue to use tobacco despite the health risks is that they have become addicted to a powerful psychoactive drug: nicotine. Although the tobacco industry long maintained that there was insufficient evidence about the addictive ness of nicotine, scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that nicotine is highly addictive.
This part of the essay examines the personal and societal forces that induce people to start smoking, as well as the force that encourage them to continue. In fact, many researchers consider nicotine to be the most physically addictive of all the psychoactive drugs. Scientist had proved that nicotine acts on the brain in the similar way as heroin and cocaine. Nicotine reaches the brain via the bloodstream seconds after it is inhaled or, in the case of smokeless tobacco, absorbed through the membranes of the mouth and nose. It triggers the release of powerful chemical messengers in the brain, including epinephrine, nor epinephrine, and dopamine. However, unlike street drugs, most of which are used to achieve a high, nicotine's primary attraction seems to be the ability to modulate everyday emotions.
At low doses, nicotine acts as a stimulant: it increases heart rate and blood pressure and can enhance alertness, concentration, rapid information processing, memory, and learning. People type faster on nicotine, for instance. At high doses, on the other hand, nicotine appears to act as a sedative; it can reduce aggressiveness and alleviate the stress response. Tobacco users may be able to fine tune nicotine's effects and regulate their moods by increasing or decreasing their intake of the drug. Studies have shown that smokers experience milder mood variation than nonsmokers while performing long, boring tasks or while watching emotional movies, for example. All tobacco products contain nicotine, and the use of any of them can lead to addiction.
Nicotine addiction causes loss of control, tolerance, and withdrawal from smoking. Three out of four smokers want to quit but find they cannot. Of the 60 - 80 % of people who kick cigarettes at stop smoking clinics, 75 % start smoking again within a year a relapse rate similar to rates for alcoholics and heroin addicts. Some evidence suggest quitting is even harder for smokeless users: in one study, only 1 of 14 smokeless tobacco users who participated in a tobacco cessation clinic was able to stop for more than 4 hours. Regular tobacco users live according to a rigid cycle of need and gratification.
On average the can go no more than 40 minutes between doses of nicotine; otherwise, they begin feeling edgy and irritable and have trouble concentrating. If ignored, nicotine cravings build until getting a cigarette or some smokeless tobacco becomes a paramount concern, crowding out all other thoughts. Tobacco users become adept, therefore, at keeping a steady amount of nicotine circulating in the blood and going to the brain. In one experiment, smokers were given cigarettes that looked and tasted alike but varied in nicotine content. The subjects automatically adjusted their rate and depth of inhalation so that they absorbed their usual amount of nicotine.
In other studies, heavy smokers were given nicotine without knowing it, and they cut down on their smoking without a conscious effort. Smokeless tobacco users maintain blood nicotine levels as high as those of cigarette smokers. Tolerance and Withdrawal Using tobacco builds up tolerance. Where one cigarette may make a beginning smoker nauseated and dizzy, a long-term smoker may have to chain smoke a pack to get the same effects. For most regular tobacco users, sudden abstinence from nicotine produces predictable withdrawal symptoms as well.
These symptoms, which come on several hours after the last dose of nicotine, can induce severe cravings, insomnia, confusion, tremors, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, muscle pains, headache, nausea, irritability, anger, and depression. Users undergo measurable changes in brain waves, heart rate, and blood pressure, and they perform poorly on tasks requiring sustained attention. While most of these symptoms pass in 2 - 3 days, many ex smokers report intermittent, intense urges to smoke for years after quitting. Addiction occurs at an early age, despite many teenagers beliefs that they will be able to stop when they wish to. A 1996 ABC News poll found that about one in three teenagers who tried smoking continued to smoke as a habit. Some 74 % stated that they wished they had never started.
Another survey revealed that only 5 % of high school smokers predicted they would definitely be smoking in 5 years; in fact, close to 75 % were smoking 7 9 years later. There are several ways an individual can quit smoking. How successful any one method will be depends on persons personality, how heavily addicted to cigarettes you are, and whether your family, social, school, and work environments will help or hinder your efforts to quit. About 85 to 95 % of smokers who quit do it on their own.
Studies of successful ex smokers have shown that support from others and regular exercise is two factors that improve the chances of success. There are different types of smokers too. Some smokers are casual smokers, who only smoke in a social scene, other types of smokers are depressed or stressed smokers, who smoke, because they feel that it relieves something in them, and finally there are addictive smoker, who do not know why they even started, but they cannot stop. What these people do not realize is that the harm they are putting through their bodies. Today it is known that cigarette smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and death in the United States.
One researcher has described cigarette smoking as causing a chronic inflammatory disorder of the lower airways (Doll 901 911). When we breathe, air enters the upper airway through the nose and mouth, where the air is filtered, warmed, and humidified. The inhaled air travels though the trachea to the lungs. Inside the lung there is a main stem called the bronchus and little air sacs called bronchioles. Oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide in the blood; blood then carries oxygen to all the body tissues (Sherman, 355). The respiratory system has several built in safeguards to protect it against disease.
The filtering that takes place in the upper airway helps prevent infectious and irritating substances from entering the lung. The trachea and the lung produce mucus, which helps trap and carry away contaminants. These contaminants are moved through the lungs by cilia, which are tiny hairs that beat rapidly back and fourth. When smoke is inhaled through the mouth, smokers automatically bypass the first safeguard, the filtering action of the nose. While smokers often produce more mucus in response to smoking, they are less able to move the mucus out of their respiratory system than nonsmokers are. This happens because cigarette smoking paralyzes and eventually destroys cilia.
It also changes the makeup of the mucus secreting glands and consequently the mucus itself. In addition, mucus glands sometimes become plugged and less able to produce mucus. The result is that smokers' mucus, contaminated with potentially harmful substances, is more likely to become trapped in the lung tissue. (Sherman 355) Smoking impairs lung growth and lung tissue in children and adolescents. Another type of lung growth impairment occurs in smokers aged 20 to 40. During this stage of life, the lungs undergo a type of growth called the plateau phase.
This phase is shortened in smokers, which shortens the time with which tobacco induced diseases develop. Smokers who take up smoking at younger ages are more apt to suffer smoking related disease after shorter periods than are smokers who begin smoking later in life. Twenty percent of people who smoke get heart disease (Peterson 215 218). Smokers in the age of 30 to 40 have an increased possibility of occurrence of heart attack. Smoking causes deterioration of elastic properties in aorta, which is the largest blood vessel in the body. However, smoking actually lowers the rate of cholesterol in blood.
It also had been proved that more a person smokes higher the chance of developing coronary heart disease and experiencing heart attack (Davis). Women are 50 % more likely to have heart attack than male smokers are. In women who smoke the risk for a heart attack is about 50 % greater than in male smokers; researchers speculate that tobacco smoke may increase cardiovascular disease in women through an effect on hormones that causes estrogen deficiency (Davis). Quitting smoking will rapidly decrease the risk of developing heart disease, but long-term smoking may still permanently damage arteries. Studies continue to confirm the dangers of second hand smoke; one study reported that exposure to second hand smoke is just as dangerous in the workplace as it is at home.
Regular exposure to passive smoke is now estimated to increase the risk of heart disease in the nonsmoker by between 25 % and 91 %, causing 30, 000 to 60, 000 deaths each year. According to one report nonsmokers who spend as little as a half hour in a smoke filled room suffer a serious drop in blood levels of antioxidants, such as vitamin C, which may be important for heart protection. Studies have now linked cigarette smoking to infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and Miscarriage (Whelan, 26) Women at greatest risk are those who smoke one or more packs a day and who started smoking before age 18 (Whelan, 81). Smoking also has a negative influence on reproduction. Smoking increases the risk for stillbirth and infant mortality by 33 %. Smoking also appears to reduce folate levels; a vitamin that is important for preventing birth defects.
Experts believe that women who smoke may pass genetic mutations that increase cancer risks to their unborn babies (Stillman, 545) Fortunately, national birth statistics showed a continued decline in the number of women who smoke during pregnancy. An estimated four million children a year fall ill from exposure to second-hand smoke (Campbell 70 - 75). Parental smoking has been shown to affect the lungs of infants as early as the first two to 10 weeks of life and increases the risk for lung diseases, such as asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia, by 50 %. Maternal smoking is believed to be related to 37 % of the cases of childhood meningococcal disease, an uncommon but potentially fatal infection. It has also been linked to abnormal lung function in children; the defects persist throughout life (Difranza Jr. 385 394). Environmental smoking worsens the condition of children with existing asthma and is thought to be responsible for 150, 000 to 300, 000 cases of lower respiratory infections every year.
Pregnant women who smoke increase their child's risk for attention deficit disorder, conduct disorders, depression, substance abuse, and lower intellectual achievement. Parental smoking also has been linked to ear infections and eczema. (Whelan 82 89) It is too bad that after all the negative effects of smoking had been proved, people continue to smoke. Moreover, still there is cigarette advertisement, which definitely will not decrease the number of smokers. There should be strict laws on the cigarette advertisement in order to withdraw adolescence of starting to smoke. I think that nicotine is one of the most stupid drugs ever found.
It is somehow possible to justify the use of psychoactive or hallucinogenic drugs, which are considered to bring fun, while tobacco (nicotine) only has very negative effect on health without giving any pleasure to smoker. Smoker just smokes cigarette, because he needs nicotine, which is in the system. Smoking has many effects that are harmful to the body. Smoking might not affect the body instantly but in the future smoking will have great impact on ones health. As smokers get older, the diseases they imposed upon themselves from smoking at an earlier age will severely hurt them, in fact, it might kill them at a far earlier age, and then they were supposed to go. I think, that there should be national programs aimed at decreasing the number of smokers, or at least (if it is possible) scientists should invents such a cigarettes that will not have negative effects on health.
Anyway, smoking is a bad habit and people should strive to approach a day, when there will not be smokers at all. Sources: Smoking and Reproductive Health, Campbell, PSG Publishing Co. 1987 Interview, Davis, 23 Nov. 1999 Effect on Maternal Cigarette Smoking on Pregnancy Complication and SIDS, Difranza JR, 1995 Morality in Relation to Smoking, Doll, New York: Media Journal, 1994 Smoking and Pulmonary Function, American Medical Journal, Vol. 16, 1968 Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesnt Tell, Whelan, New York: Prometheus, 1997 http: // web
Free research essays on topics related to: second hand smoke, cigarette smoking, heart rate and blood pressure, nicotine addiction, smokeless tobacco
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