Smoking

Smoking is a matter of personal choice. However, the link between smoking and lung cancer seems clear. If you are going to smoke, you should know what is happening in your body.

1. Each time you inhale tobacco smoke you kill several hundred lung cells.
2. You send carbon monoxide into the blood where it competes with oxygen for hemoglobin (and usually wins).
3. You paralyze the bronchial cilia (hairs that catch things) and make it hard for them to keep bacteria from the lungs.
4. You speed up your heart rate.
5. You dull your brain with carbon monoxide, thereby slowing your reaction time and visual acuity.
6. Nicotine hits the central nervous system and stimulates it to release hormones. A feeling of depression and fatigue follows the nicotine "rush."
7. Other components of cigarette smoke cause the arteries to contract, causing a decrease in blood supply to the fingers and toes and a drop in skin temperature.