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Everyone knows that smoking is harmful to your health. If you ask thoroughly, why cigarettes are harmful to your health? I believe most people will think it is the “nicotine” in cigarettes. In our understanding, “nicotine” is not only harmful to human health, but also carcinogenic. But a study by Rutgers University in New Jersey seems to overturn the idea that “nicotine” causes cancer.

Does nicotine in Cigarettes cause cancer?

Nicotine is the main component of cigarettes and is listed as a carcinogen by many oncologists. However, there is no nicotine in the list of carcinogens published by the World Health Organization.

Nicotine does not cause cancer. Is smoking harmful to health a “big scam”?

Since Rutgers University in New Jersey and the World Health Organization have not clearly pointed out that “nicotine” causes cancer, is it not true that “smoking is harmful to the body”?

Not at all. Although it is said that nicotine in cigarettes will not directly cause smokers to suffer from cancer, long-term inhalation of a large amount of nicotine will lead to a kind of “dependence” and smoking addiction, which will eventually increase the risk of cancer.

According to the composition table of cigarettes, nicotine is not the only substance in cigarettes. Cigarettes also contain certain tar, benzopyrene and other substances, as well as carbon monoxide, nitrite and other substances produced after lighting cigarettes, which will increase the risk of cancer.

·Carbon monoxide

Although carbon monoxide in cigarettes does not directly cause cancer, ingestion of large amounts of carbon monoxide can lead to human poisoning. Because carbon monoxide will destroy the transmission of oxygen by blood, leading to the phenomenon of hypoxia in the human body; In addition, it will combine with hemoglobin in the blood, resulting in toxic symptoms.

Inhaling excessive carbon monoxide will increase the cholesterol content in the body. Too high cholesterol concentration will increase the risk of arteriosclerosis and induce cardiovascular disease.

·Benzopyrene

The World Health Organization lists benzopyrene as a class I carcinogen. Long term excessive intake of benzopyrene will slowly cause lung damage and increase the risk of lung cancer.

·Tar

A cigarette contains about 6~8 mg of tar. Tar has certain carcinogenicity. Long term intake of excessive tar will cause lung damage, affect lung function and increase the risk of lung cancer.

·Nitrous acid

Cigarettes will produce a certain amount of nitrous acid when ignited. However, nitrite has long been classified as a class I carcinogen by who. Long term intake of excessive nitrite is bound to affect health and increase the risk of cancer.

From the above, we know that even though nicotine does not cause cancer directly, long-term smoking will still increase the risk of cancer. Therefore, smoking is harmful to health and is not a “big scam”.

In life, the vast majority of people believe that “smoking = cancer”. Long-term smoking will increase the risk of lung cancer, while non-smokers will not suffer from lung cancer. This is not the case. People who don’t smoke don’t mean they won’t have lung cancer, but the risk of lung cancer is much lower than that of smokers.

Who is more likely to suffer from lung cancer compared with non-smokers?

According to the statistics of the International Cancer Research Institute of the World Health Organization, in 2020 alone, there were about 820000 new cases of lung cancer in China. The British Cancer Research Institute found that the risk of lung cancer increased by 25% for regular smokers, and only 0.3% for non-smokers.

So for smokers, how is it going to lung cancer step by step?

We will simply classify the years of smokers: 1-2 years of smoking; Smoking for 3-10 years; Smoking for more than 10 years.

01 smoking years 1~2 years

If you smoke for 2 years, small black spots will slowly appear in the lungs of smokers. It is mainly caused by the harmful substances in cigarettes adsorbed in the lungs, but the lungs are still healthy at this time. As long as you quit smoking in time, the damage to the lungs may be reversed.

02 smoking years 3~10 years

When small black spots appear in the lungs, if you still can’t quit smoking in time, the harmful substances in cigarettes will continue to “attack” the lungs, making more and more black spots around the lungs appear in sheets. At this time, the lungs have been gradually damaged by harmful substances and lost their vitality. At this time, the lung function of local smokers will slowly decline.

If you quit smoking at this time, your lungs will not be able to return to their original healthy appearance. But you can stop letting the lungs get worse.

03 smoking for more than 10 years

After smoking for ten or more years, “Congratulations” has evolved from a ruddy and plump lung to a “black carbon lung”, which has completely lost its elasticity. There may be cough, dyspnea and other symptoms at ordinary times, and the risk of lung cancer is hundreds of times higher than that of non-smokers.

At the same time, he Jie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and President of the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, once said that long-term smoking will not only increase the risk of lung cancer, but also the harmful substances in cigarettes will damage human DNA and cause genetic changes, thus increasing the risk of oral cancer, laryngeal cancer, rectal cancer, gastric cancer and other cancers.

Conclusion: through the above contents, I believe we have a further understanding of the harm of cigarettes to human body. I would like to remind people who like to smoke here that the harm caused by cigarettes is not real-time, but needs to be accumulated for a long time. The longer the years of smoking, the greater the harm to the human body. Therefore, for the sake of their own and their families’ health, they should give up smoking as soon as possible.