Hello guys,
I guess everybody knows that smoking is bad, but what is it actually that makes it so unhealthy for our bodies?
Now and then we see the consequences of it - despite of the nasty taste there are a lot of unpleasant things related to smoking. So, imagine you want to convince your partner, friend or family member to quit smoking. They might be asking, but why exactly is smoking unhealthy? - would you have an answer on that...?
Well after this episode & the following of the MedBlog Series you will know more than enough about the ingredients of a cigarette to reinforce your view....
CIGARETTE SMOKE IS TOXIC ☣️
I mean for sure it has to do something with the ingredients, but what kind of substances do we actually smoke on daily basis?
It might sound weird, but when we light up a cigarette it leads to an imperfect combustion due to the lack Oxygen [O2] – just imagine it that way: the cigarette burns way to quick & the oxygen is not everywhere at every time available, when parts of the cigarettes get burned
Due to that inconsistency there are about 5.000 different kinds of chemical substances, which are part of the aerosol people inhale – e.g. blood toxic, irritating, caustic, neurotoxic & cancerous. substances
SUBSTANCES OF THE SMOKE 🚬
Carbonmonoxid [CO]
Approx. 4,2% of the inhaled smoke – binds with a 300-times higher affinity than O2 to the haemoglobin of the erythrocytes resulting in an inhibition of a sufficient O2 supply
Cyanid
blocks the Cytochrom C of the respiratory chain in the mitochondrions and therefore the O2-dependent energy generation
Ammoniac [NH3]
Ammoniac reacts with H2O [meaning any kind of wetness] of the lungs into a toxic & acidly product which can even directly damage your brain & nerves in higher doses
Nitrooxygens [NO/NO2]
Maybe known due to movies like Fast & Furious where also used in tuning cars to maximum performance – same as NH3 it reacts with H2O of the lungs to nitric acid (HNO3) which irritates the respiratory tract
Reactive Oxygenspecies [ROS]
Up to 10^14 of so-called ROS per puff – there are some mechanisms in our body who can deal with those kind of radical molecules (e.g. superoxiddismutase, catalase or glutathione peroxidase), but these are also used to render a lot of other threatening molecules harmless. It is important to mention that those mechanisms are depletable (!). The ROS can e.g. interact in the Fenton-Reaction with e.g. Fe2+ & Cu+ into extremely reactive hydroxy radicals
What you should keep in mind is that ROS cause chain reactions in which every single one of them damages a molecule of our body – one of the most fragile molecules to ROS is α1-Trypsin [due to the fact that it contains 8 methionine which has a high affinity to ROS]
α1-Trypsin is an acute-phase-protein, meaning it is produces by the body during e.g. inflammation, and anti-protease.
Proteases, e.g. the neutrophil elastase secreted by the so-called neutrophils which are cells of the immunsystem, are enzymes specialised in degrading different kind of proteins [e.g. elastases degrade elastin].
So, the anti-proteases of the body are important to regulate the activity of the protease. This is hugely important to protect e.g. the body-own lung material from being destroyed by its own immune reaction – so by adding 1 to 1 you can imagine what kind of impact ROS can have by deactivating α1-Trypsin.
Polyzyklic aromatic hydrocarbons
e.g. benzopyrene - these are pre-carcinogenic. They are getting cancerous after being kind of accidentally activated by the body’s metabolism actually trying to excrete that substance – the end product in this case are epoxides damaging the DNA by binding to Guanin being one of the components. The PAKs end up incorporating themselves into the helical structure [Intercalation] causing problems which eventually lead to uncontrolled growth and thus cancer
Heterocyclic hydrocarbons
e.g. acridin & carbazol – similar to e.g. benzopyrene those molecules intercalate themselves into the DNA.
Nitrosamine
e.g. diethylenetriamine – also pre-carcinogenic. As carbonium-ions they lead to different kind of interactions with the DNA [e.g. strand breaks or methylation of bases]
Aldehyde
e.g. formaldehyde or acrolein – these result from glycerol – also carcinogenic due to DNA-interactions
Heavy metals
e.g. cadmium & radioisotopes like Polonium 210 – they accumulate in the body and are obviously not beneficial at all for us
Nicotin
It isn’t carcinogenic by itself, but it has cancer-promoting effects due to the reason that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors [nAChRs] increases:
- cell growth
- cell migration/metastasize
- apoptosis resistance
- fat & glycogen breakdown: results a weight reduction and into more free fatty acids [FFA] causing arteriosclerosis
- high blood pressure
- high hearth rate
- risk of gastral ulceration
Keep in mind that our body has really good repair mechanisms for low toxin doses, but during smoking the exposure is just to high leading to a depletion of our body own repair resources which are now missing for other important processes
The damage of DNA, membranes, proteins & enzymes result into a huge amount of oxidative stress, which leads to a faster aging and potential mutation which are overseen be the body own repair systems – important cells lose their function & extremely quickly dividing cells can degenerate. The results are inflammation, metaplasia & dysplasia up to malign [ill-natured] cancer.
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
Here is the thing: smoking chronically strains your body - more than you might think. Just to give you an example: there is a higher chance of a non-smoker to recover fully from e.g. an lung infection or similar than a smoker, while the smoker is also more prone to hit a so seen point of no return, where the lungs are so damaged & chronically inflamed that they will never ever recover from totally. Such a chronic inflammation of the lungs is hard to treat & leads to a lot of different diseases, which we will talk about in the next episode.
To make it even clearer: all three patients shown in the diagram are victim of a pneumonia [lung infection]
- Pat #1 has a well functioning and not damaged lung & will totally recover from the loss of Elastin during the inflammation [elastic protein of the lungs - logically concluded fundamental for the organ functioning]
- Pat #2 is a smoker that had no diseases & problems with the lungs before - due to the acute disease and the already chronically damaged & inflamed lungs, he will develop serious lung problems that will worsen even more over time.
- Pat #3 already damaged his lungs so much trough e.g. smoking that his lung parenchym [functional tissue of the organ] will degrade overtime due to the already heavy chronic inflammation
Checklist
By now ...
✅ you are informed about some of the substances in cigarette smoke
✅ you know which negative impact those substances have
✅ you know that your lungs can be damaged even though you do not feel any impact yet
Do not forget to follow in order to not miss out on new content!
See you soon!
Noogie 👨⚕️
Disclaimer
The content shown here is no alternative to consulting a doctor – if you have any kind of health issues bothering you, firstly consider visiting a health-expert. This is just meant to feed your personal interests. All the information given are related to the German standards
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