Short Essay About Lungs: How Smoking Affects the Health
Smoking is a very harmful habit that people get in to, it affects your whole body but especially your lungs. It is one of the biggest causes of preventable deaths and on average 1 in 2 smokers will die from a smoking related disease. Smoking causes more deaths each year then the following causes combined; HIV, Alcohol use, Illicit drug use, Motor vehicle accidents and firearm related incidents. In short essay about lungs the negative effects of smoking on lung health will be briefly discussed.
What smoking does to the lungs: smoking changes how well your lungs and airways function. Some of these changes are sudden and only last a short time for example colds and pneumonia these can also become fatal. Some changes may occur slowly and last a lifetime for example emphysema. These changes occur because when you smoke the cells that produce mucus in your lungs grow in size and numbers, this then results in the amount of mucus that is produced increases and it also becomes a lot thicker. This makes it hard for your lungs to clean out the extra mucus, so it stays in your airways and blocks them which causes them to clog and makes you cough more, and the extra mucus is also prone to infections. Smoking can also cause your lungs to age faster which makes their natural defence mechanisms from protecting you against infections slower. Many smokers cough after even one or two cigarettes because it causes the lungs to be irritated and inflamed.
Smoking can also cause your lungs and lung tissue to deteriorate and when this happens it decrease the number of air spaces and blood vessels in your lungs which results in less oxygen to critical parts of your body. Cilia are very important in the cleaning of your lungs they are broom-like hairs that line the lung and after you have a cigarette they slow down and after just one cigarette it could lead to their actions to be slow for several hours. Smoking can also kill the number of cilia in your lungs and this leaves fewer cilia to properly clean out the lungs.
Smoking and illnesses: people with asthma have periods with shortness of breath, wheezing, chest tightness and coughing. When people who have asthma smoke the symptoms become harder to control and inhalers which normally would help people become ineffective. Smoking can really affect a person when they get the flu or pneumonia because people who smoke are less responsive to the flu vaccines and the lungs can not cope well when there is an infection compared to a person who doesn’t smoke.
Overall, smoking is a “long-term” goal to the death. In tandem with other disorders it can become a “short-term”. Smoking causes about 90% of all lung cancer deaths, it also causes around 80% of all chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
