British Research: One Cigarette Shortens Life by an Average of 20 Minutes
A study by the Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group at University College London shows that smoking one cigarette shortens life by an average of 20 minutes. To be precise, each cigarette shortens a man's life by an average of 17 minutes and a woman's by 22 minutes; a lifelong smoker loses an average of 10 years of life. The effects of smoking begin to show in middle age, impairing quality of life and bringing painful chronic diseases on earlier. By age 60, a smoker's physical health is equivalent to that of a 70-year-old nonsmoker.
Cigarettes contain thousands of harmful components, the main ones being nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and radioactive substances. Nicotine is addictive; smokers get hooked mainly because of nicotine. Nicotine stimulates the central nervous system, raising heart rate and blood pressure and causing vasoconstriction and increased blood viscosity.
The tar produced when tobacco burns is rich in carcinogens (such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrosamines), which are the culprits behind lung, oral and esophageal cancers and many others. In addition, long-term intake of the trace radioactive substances in tobacco can also cause cancer; the carbon monoxide from incomplete tobacco combustion lowers blood oxygen and raises cardiovascular risk.
Overall, then, smoking has five main harms: (1) impairing lung function, (2) impairing heart function, (3) causing cancer, (4) impairing nervous function, and (5) accelerating aging. Smokers develop chronic respiratory disease, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, malignant tumors and dementia at significantly higher rates than nonsmokers.
Smokers' families, exposed long-term to secondhand smoke, also suffer health damage. Truly, one person smokes and the whole family suffers. Many people may not care about the damage to their own longevity and health, but they cannot ignore the harm to their families. Smoking not only harms family health but also turns the smoker into a major burden on the family. As chronic disease arrives early, the whole family pays for the long smoking habit, bearing heavy financial pressure and losing peace at home.
Quitting smoking brings immediate results. No matter when one quits, it reduces the damage tobacco does to the body and to the family. So, friends who smoke, resolve to quit early, use willpower to overcome the difficulty, and quit to reduce the harm.