Smoking may be the most unhealthy act of all, causing many diseases and reducing life expectancy and quality of life. In fact, smoking represents approximately 30% of all cancer deaths and nearly 90% of lung cancer deaths.
There are many benefits that quitting smoking can bring. Despite this, at first it is normal to have a bad time since it is a habit that is forged by positive and negative reinforcementfor which it would be beneficial to go to a psychologist to help us.
Decreases the chances of getting cancer
Cancer is a broad group of diseases that kill many people each year. Our body undergoes mutations continuouslybut we are able to fix it or cure ourselves of some cancer cells.
There are two main problems with tobacco:
- It has mutagenic substances that increase the number of mutations that our cells suffer
- It makes us less efficient at repairing these mutations and decreases the effectiveness of our defenses.
These two things increase the chances of getting cancer and, in addition, be much more aggressivegreatly reducing the chances of survival.
Reduces the chances of cardiovascular diseases
Much of cardiovascular disease is due to the formation of an atheromatous plaque in the walls of our cardiovascular system. This causes the blood to not circulate and flow properly.
In fact, an atheromatous plaque can be generated so large that it completely closes off the passage of blood, generating all kinds of problems such as thrombi, aneurysms, heart attacks, etc.
These plaques are formed for various reasons such as:
- High cholesterol
- High triglycerides
- insulin resistance
What smoking does is make it easier for the levels of these causes to increase and the chances of them forming a plaque are greater.
lowers hypertension
There are substances such as nicotine that can temporarily modify the Regulation of blood pressure by a rapid effect on the autonomic nervous system.
Also accelerates arterial aging, which plays a role in chronic hypertension. Chronic sympathetic activation induced by smoking also plays some role in lipid metabolism and insulin resistance, also causing hypertension.
Less likely to fall ill
When an external agent attacks us and makes us sick, normally, in a person who smokes, healing time is longer. This is because the immune system, which is one of the defenses we have, is less efficient acting before these agents and, therefore, our healing time will be shorter and less serious.
In addition, it may even be that quitting smoking does not make you sick, since our immune system will be able to act against these external agents before they generate any type of symptomatology. This is the same thing that can also happen with cancer.that we can mutate some cells and make them cancerous, but if our immune system kills them before they grow, there will be no problem.
Decreases chances of dementia
Dementia consists of the loss of the structure of neurons. Neurons connect between axons and dendrites. The more cognitive activity, the more branches are builtand when you start to drop those connections, you see those signs of insanity.
Although dementia is something that is also affected by genetics, it does not mean that it is all due to genetics. Exercising, eating well, good sleep hygiene and, of course, not smoking, makes our brain healthier and decreases the chances that those neural connections will be reduced in the future.
Improved lung health
It is not necessary to have asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or other diseases of the respiratory tract for the health of our lungs or, rather, the respiratory system to decline.
This is especially noticeable in people who do cardiovascular exercise who, when they stop smoking, they are capable of greatly increasing their athletic performance.
Nor to mention the enormous probabilities (as mentioned above) of suffering from lung cancer and other diseases such as asthma, COPD, etc.
Finally, in people who already have certain respiratory pathologies, These are much more accentuated.
Improved bone health
Many studies show that tobacco smoking causes an imbalance in bone turnover, which leads to lower bone mass and makes bones vulnerable to osteoporosis and fractures.
Tobacco smoke indirectly influences bone mass through altered body weight, the vitamin D axis (essential for good bone health), adrenal hormones, sex hormones, and increased oxidative stress in tissues bony
All this causes theThe creation of bone is much more limited than the destruction of this. For better understanding, it is as if we did a lot of sports and we could not use the protein ingested to create muscle mass. What would happen is that we would eventually lose muscle mass.
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