A Scary Look Inside the Body of a Smoker (Part 2)
Blood Vessels: Your blood pressure increases by 10 to 15 percent every time you light up, putting additional stress on your heart and blood vessels and increasing your risk of heart attack and stroke. Smoking increases your risk of Berger’s disease, which cuts off virtually all the circulation in your extremities. Severe cases require amputation.
The Skin: Smoking constricts the blood vessels in your skin, decreasing the delivery of life-giving oxygen to the largest organ in your body. This, combined with the damaging rays of the sun, causes premature wrinkling in smokers. There are some fairly graphic films that are shown in smoking workshops that depicts the horribly wrinkled skin of women smokers in their fifties. And many testimonies have been given by smokers that seeing these films were a positive motivator to break free of smoking.
If vanity were more compelling a motivator, more smokers would break free, because they are at high risk for a medical syndrome commonly called “smoker’s face.” This is characterized by deep lines around the corners of the mouth and eyes, a gauntness of facial features, and a grayish appearance of the skin. In one study, 46 percent of long-term smokers were found to have smoker’s face.
Blood: Carbon monoxide - the colorless, odorless, deadly gas present in automobile exhaust - is present in cigarette smoke in more than 600 times the concentration considered safe in industrial plants. A smoker’s blood typically contains four to fifteen times as much carbon monoxide as that of a nonsmoker. This carbon monoxide stays in the bloodstream for up to six hours after you stop smoking. You decrease your likelihood of sudden death by 50 percent within a few hours of ceasing smoking.
When you breathe in cigarette smoke, the carbon monoxide passes immediately into your blood, binding to the oxygen receptor sites and expelling the oxygen molecules from your red blood cells. This means that less oxygen reaches your brain and other vital organs. Because of this added carbon monoxide load, a smoker’s red blood cells are also less effective in removing carbon dioxide in the gas-exchange system that occurs in the lungs.
Longtime smokers have abnormally high levels of red blood cells - a condition called polycythemia. In addition, smoking makes your blood clot more easily. Both of these factors markedly increase your risk of heart attack or stroke.