What Smoking Does, Nicotine Is a Drug, Addiction

by National Institute on Aging

"I've smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years - what's the use of quitting now?"

If you quit smoking, you are likely to add years to your life, breathe more easily, and have more energy. You will have extra money for spending or saving, and food will taste better. When you quit smoking, you join over a million people who stop smoking each year. Whether you are young or old, you will also:

• have less chance of cancer, heart attack, and lung disease,
• have better blood circulation,
• have no odor of smoke in your clothes and hair,
• set a healthy example for children and grandchildren,
• have a more sensitive sense of smell,
• have a better sense of taste, and
• have healthier family members, particularly children and grandchildren.

What Smoking Does

Cigarette smoke damages your lungs and airways. Air passages swell and, over time, you will have more and more trouble clearing mucus from your air passages. This can cause a cough that won't go away. Sometimes this leads to a lung disease called chronic bronchitis. If you keep smoking, normal breathing may become harder and harder as emphysema develops. In emphysema, your lung tissue is destroyed, making it very hard to get enough oxygen.

Smoking can shorten your life. It brings an early death to more than 400,000 people in the United States each year. Lifelong smokers have a 1 in 2 chance of dying from a smoking-related disease. Smoking cuts years off the end of your life. Smoking makes millions of Americans sick by causing:

Heart disease. If you have high blood pressure or high cholesterol (a fatty substance in the blood) and also smoke, you increase your chance of having a heart attack. Quitting will greatly lower your risk of heart disease.

Cancer. Smoking can cause cancer of the lungs, mouth, larynx (voice box), esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix. Your chance of getting cancer gets greater the more cigarettes you smoke each day and the more years you smoke.

Respiratory problems. If you smoke, you are more likely than a nonsmoker to get the flu (influenza), pneumonia, or other infections that can interfere with your breathing. These can be very dangerous, especially for older people.

Osteoporosis. If you are an older woman who smokes, your chance of developing osteoporosis is greater. Women who are past menopause tend to lose bone strength and sometimes develop this bone-weakening disorder. Bones weakened by osteoporosis break more easily. Also, women smokers tend to begin menopause sooner than the average woman does, putting them at risk at an earlier age.

Good News About Quitting

As soon as you stop smoking, your lungs, heart, and circulatory system (the arteries and veins that blood flows through) start getting better.

• Your chance of heart attack, stroke, and other circulatory diseases begins to drop within the first year after you quit.
• Within one year of quitting you are almost half as likely to develop heart disease as you were before.
• The flow of blood to your hands and feet gets stronger.
• Your breathing becomes easier within a few months after your last cigarette.
• Your chance of getting cancer from smoking also begins to shrink. The sooner you quit, the greater the benefit to your health. Within 10 to 15 years after quitting, your risk of cancer may be almost as low as that of a nonsmoker.

Nicotine Is a Drug

Nicotine is a drug-like chemical in cigarette smoke. It is the main reason tobacco products are addictive. At first, when you smoke, nicotine makes you feel good. This might make you want to smoke more. Soon, your body starts to need more nicotine in order to feel good. Then you smoke even more to keep getting that pleasurable feeling.

The first few weeks after quitting are the hardest. Some people who give up smoking have withdrawal symptoms. You may become grumpy, hungry, or tired. You may have headaches, feel depressed, or have problems sleeping or concentrating. Some people have no withdrawal symptoms at all.

About the Author

www.nia.nih.gov
NIA, one of the 27 Institutes and Centers of NIH, leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life. In 1974, Congress granted authority to form NIA to provide leadership in aging research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs relevant to aging and older people.