Cigarette Smoking Shortens Your Life by 10 Years and Makes You Sick Sooner
This site is all about a longer healthier life. If that is a goal for you, one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself is stop smoking. Smoking cigarettes is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Stopping smoking before the age of 40 reduces your risk of dying from a smoking related disease by 90%. Women who smoke are 12 times as likely to die of lung disease as nonsmokers. Since 1960, deaths in women from lung cancer have increased by 500%. More women die of lung cancer than breast cancer. You’ve come a long way baby!
It is not just sickness and death. Smoking makes us look older sooner. “Smoking can speed up the normal aging process of your skin, contributing to wrinkles and other changes to the appearance of your face. These changes include crow's-feet, pronounced lines between the eyebrows, uneven skin complexion, a grayish tone on lighter skin, deep creases and puffiness below the eyes, wrinkles around the mouth, and thinner lips.” It reduces fertility and contributes to sudden death in infants. And guys are not off the hook. The more you smoke, the more likely you are to have erectile dysfunction. Think about that the next time you light up!
There is a mountain of evidence supporting these facts and now we finally understand how it all works. It is like the Chinese concept of yin and yang—push and pull—balance! In this setting, it is the balance between oxidants and antioxidants. As you can see in the diagram below, each puff of cigarette smoke is loaded with oxidants which make you age faster and get sick sooner. The oxidants persistently activate the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR-the purple box in the middle of the diagram) which switches on mTOR and switches off AMPK. Those factors kill the good cells in the lung that help us breath (emphysema) and they produce malignant growth in other cells in the lung to kill us another way. Continued smoking makes the cancer resistant to EGFR inhibitors. They make it more likely we will have heart attacks and strokes. Stopping smoking is the best single thing that you can do for your health. Let us know in the comments if this information helps you get there.
