The risks of smoking
Written by:The happy 20s helped to present the fact of smoking as a pleasant habit. This idea began to change in the 70s, when nicotine began to be considered a drug. However, until 1987 the term smoking was not coined to refer to an addiction seriously harmful to health. The World Health Organization ( WHO ) took five more years to define it.
A person is considered to have nicotine dependence when smoking from ten cigarettes a day. 50% of smokers between 20 and 30 years suffer from it, and from that age the figure reaches 90%.
Today the WHO estimates that about 5 million people die annually from causes directly related to tobacco use. This figure represents 1 in 2 deaths in middle-aged people. Smoking causes more deaths than the consumption of alcohol and other drugs , traffic accidents , homicides and AIDS. In addition, it is expected that in the year 2030 the death toll may rise to 10 million.
Adverse effects of tobacco on the body
Smoking is related to 25 main categories of conditions, among which cancer , ischemic cardiopathy and chronic respiratory diseases stand out due to their prevalence. It does not always trigger deadly diseases, but it is closely related to some disorders that negatively affect the quality of life , such as anxiety , depression and alcoholism. We can point out that 60% of depressed patients are smokers, as well as 9 out of 10 affected with schizophrenia .
Nicotine has a negative effect on the cardiovascular system , the nervous system , the digestive system and the metabolism. The tobacco leaf contains more than 600 components, which we can divide in two. For one place the water and on the other the dry matter. This material contains organic components such as proteins , ammonia , alkaloids and carbohydrates and inorganic components such as lead or nickel. When smoking, due to combustion processes, the cigar reaches temperatures of more than 800ºC at the tip and 400ºC in the carbonization zone, from where it decreases. For this reason it has been established that the first third of the cigarette is a zone of low toxicity, which increases until reaching its maximum in the third third.
