When you stop smoking, you will dramatically improve your chances of avoiding myriad biological and physiological side effects. Take a look below and glance at just how smoking effects all parts of your body, including the urinary tract, digestion, bones and ones own reproductive system. There are additional side effects that effect capillaries and oxygen flow.
Stop Smoking to Reduce Genito-Urinary
Problems
Smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of bladder cancer. The risk
of bladder cancer onset is lessened again by half if you stop smoking.
The risk that you could develop bladder cancer will remain somewhat
elevated for decades after you stop smoking.
Stop Smoking to Reduce Digestive Organ
Failure
When you stop smoking, you can re-elevate the pressure on the esophageal
sphincter. Without pressure, acid can reflux from the stomach into
the esophagus which can lead to esophagitis and permanent esophageal
stricture (narrowing).
To stop smoking means you lessen the risk factor for so many health
problems, including cancers. Some such cancers include digestive tract
cancers and can include pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. Did you
know that the risk for pancreatic cancer drops precipitously only 10
years after you stop smoking? As for colon cancer, there appears to
be a difference of opinion. Some prodigious American studies have shown
a relationship between smoking and colon cancer while a Swedish study
showed no relationship at all after a 20-year study. The American study
opines that it may take as long as 35 years after you stop smoking
for colon cancers to appear as a result of smoking cigarettes.
Stop Smoking to Save Your Bones
Smoking also can lead to the onset of osteoporosis which is a thinning
of your bones due to a loss of bone calcium. Women that do not stop
smoking are more affected than men. Both groups can also experience
disk disease if they don’t stop smoking. It is said that elderly
women, if they do not stop smoking, are predisposed to fractures
due to osteoporosis. It seems that in 29 studies that involved 4,000
hip fractures, about 1 in 8 of those hip fractures occurred as a
result of smoking cigarettes.
Stop Smoking to Reduce the Risk of
Infertility
Infertility can be reversed if you stop smoking. You’re also
playing Russian roulette if you smoke during pregnancy because you
subject your unborn fetus to immeasurable irreversible harm such as
stillbirth, fetal oxygen deprivation, placental abnormalities caused
by the carbon monoxide and nicotine inherent in cigarette smoke and
congenital malformations such as cleft palate. Women that cease
to smoke during or as late as the first trimester can diminish
but not completely eliminate the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
If the child survives, health problems may still accompany it throughout its life if you do not stop smoking. Did you know that miscarriage is 2-3x more common in smokers?