Just a Smoker's Cough
Submitted by SharpHealth Team on Monday 11th October 2010- Turns out smoking is bad for you — today.
- How smoking today encourages infectious disease today.
- How smoking today complicates surgery and recovery today.
- Other problems that affect you in the short term.
No smoker wants to hear this, but, as it turns out, smoking is bad for you. No kidding. The reason most smokers continue to smoke may be because they assume smoking-related health problems will only affect their health at some amorphous later date. Not so. Recent studies by the Center for Disease Control show that smoking makes the body more susceptible to a myriad of diseases — in real time. That is, you smoke today, you make yourself more susceptible to major health problem today. Who knew?
Aside from lung and heart disease, all kinds of cancer and emphysema, all likely to affect smokers over the long term, studies show that smoking increases the chances of developing other serious health problems over the short term, as well. These are problems that may affect the lives of younger SharpMen. For example, got stress? Who doesn’t? Turns out that cigarette smoking increases the chances of developing — and dying from — peptic and duodenal ulcers by two to four times over non-smokers.
Other short-term problems include a greater susceptibility to infectious diseases. The CDC recently reported that smoking is the number one cause of infection that can lead to pneumonia or even meningitis, a serious infection in the brain that could lead to coma, permanent neurological damage and death — not uncommon in young men. Smokers have a rate of infection four times higher than non-smokers. This same report concluded that smokers are more susceptible to other, more common ailments, such as colds, ear infections and upper-respiratory infections. In other words, it could very well be that cigarettes are eating away at sick days that could otherwise be used for vacation.
Other problems include complications to medical problems that could prevent the normal course of treatment from being as effective as expected. More serious still is the fact that smoking complicates surgery and other medical procedures due to the constricting effect that nicotine has on blood vessels. Studies also show that smokers who undergo serious operations require substantially longer recovery periods. Hey, you may not be planning that Tony Curtis-style eye-tuck now, but consider the need to recover quickly from an unexpected surgery.
Something to think about.
This article last updated on Monday 11th October 2010