How Smoking Damage the Lung and Brain

Most people who smoke have read the warnings on the sides of a cigarette package declaring smoking to be the leading cause of lung cancer. This is the main focus of most no-smoking advocates as even second hand smoke from breathing in the air around someone else who is smoking enters the system of anyone standing nearby and has the same effects on them as they do the actual smoker. Lung cancer is not the only damaging effect of smoking. As the smoke enters the system it is taken into the lungs and while the most prominent damage does occur there it travels through the body affecting many organs even the brain.

When smoke enters the lung it makes your body work harder to extract any remaining oxygen from what is available. The smoke itself damages the delicate lung tissues and the small air sacs inside the lungs known as alveoli. These small air sacs become less resilient and can stretch less because they become hardened by the smoke. The resulting dead tissues of the lung are black and hardened. This shows up in the form of diseases that are categorized as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Members of this disease group are: bronchitis, emphysema and asthma.

The main function of the lungs is to extract oxygen from the surrounding air and transfer it to the blood stream via the alveoli. There are somewhere around 300,000 alveoli in the lungs. Over time the destruction of these alveoli limits the amount of air the lungs can take in and therefore the amount of oxygen that can be transferred to the vital organs of the body. Blood passes through the lungs the alveoli transfer the oxygen to it and it is carried to the brain. Smoking causes damage to the brain because it limits the amount of oxygen available to it.

Many smokers believe that they think better when they smoke. This is a deceptive feeling that is actually caused by a temporary euphoria brought on by the nicotine receptors in the brain. In reality it is the time when they feel less sharp that are the effects of smoking. The lack of oxygen to the brain creates a long-term fogginess and cloudiness of mental capacity that is temporarily alleviated by a sudden influx of nicotine but then becomes even more pronounced immediately after each episode. Those times when a smoker feels less sharp are the times they should always have the same feeling they get when they smoke and are the signs of decreased brain function.

People who begin smoking in their youth often have stunted intellectual development and adults who smoke have more episodes of forgetfulness. Damages in the brain related to smoking are harder to establish than the trauma caused to the lungs by smoking. However, since every organ in the body is dependent on oxygen from blood in order to function properly, and since smoking limits the oxygen available, it is more than reasonable to expect that every bodily function is impaired by the act of smoking. Don’t wait to stop smoking. The sooner you quit, the sooner you will start repairing the damages smoking has caused. Quit Smoking Today