What Are The Effects Of Smoking On The Lungs?

Nicotine is a toxin. Too much nicotine can actually kill you and people have used it to murder enemies back in the day. So it’s little wonder that smoking has a large effect on lungs. In fact, the place that seems to become damaged the most in smokers is definitely their lungs – a person can end up with a variety of diseases and most of them are diseases which are very dangerous because they compromise a person’s ability to breathe correctly.

The largest smoking effect on the lungs is, of course, the development of any kind of cancer because of smoking. Lung cancer causes cancerous tissue to grow on or in the lungs; this impairs a person’s ability to breathe. And as a side-effect of smoking on the lungs it can also cause that cancer to spread to other areas in the body which further impedes a person’s health. Some doctors note that nearly 90% of deaths from lung cancer are almost directly related to smoking. Smoking can even lead to other kinds of cancers including breast cancer and prostate cancer and the effects of smoking during pregnancy can cause complications with the baby.

Another smoking effect on the lungs is another disease known as chronic bronchitis. This smoking effect on the lungs causes severe narrowing of small airways in the chest – in other words, the lungs become damaged in this way as well. Many smokers with chronic bronchitis actually have lungs that are more blackened than a coal miner’s who has been working in a mine for the same amount of time they have been smoking. This is thanks to the effect of smoking effects the lungs. People can also develop small lesions on the alveolar walls or even the loss of the epithelial lining cells. Chronic bronchitis is one of the more serious smoking effects on the lungs.

Another smoking effect on the lungs is the disease called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD. This disease is like many other diseases caused by the effect of smoking on the lungs – it makes it extremely difficult for people to breathe. Inside your body, your airways branch out inside of your lungs and at the end of each branch are balloon-like air sacs. These sacs should be stringy and elastic, but one of the effects of smoking on the lungs is that COPD causes those airways and sacs to lose become floppy and lose their strength, almost like a stretched-out rubber band. This, of course, makes it hard for them to function properly.