Every Time You Smoke, This Is What You Are Actually Consuming

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Cigarettes are bad for your health – this is common knowledge! But do you know the extent of the risks? Or the constituents of a single smoke? Based on the popularity of the habit, we’d like to assume that a significant number of smokers are not aware of what they’re actually consuming.

According to the Center for Disease Control [1] (CDC), cigarette smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable (emphasis on preventable) death in the U.S., accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 deaths annually. It actually causes more deaths than alcohol use, illegal drugs, HIV, firearm accidents, and motor vehicle injuries. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [2] approximates that smoking has claimed more American lives than all wars.

To make matters worse, over 3,000 teenagers [3] are initiated into the cigarette-smoking vice every day. With such heart-wrenching statistics, maybe peeling back a cigarette and exposing the smokes for what they really are might dissuade people from accelerating their death and suffering.

The Chemicals In A Cigarette

Did you know that there are over 600 ingredients [4] in a single cigarette stick? And no, these ingredients are not sugar, spice, or anything nice. In fact, 69 chemicals in a cigarette are either poisonous, carcinogenic or both.

Would you consume toilet cleaner (ammonia)? What about barbecue lighter (hexamine), battery components (cadmium), industrial solvents (toluene), or rat poison (arsenic)? Sounds like a hard pass, right? Well, all these – and more – cringe-worthy ingredients are used in cigarettes.

As shown in the figure above, cigarettes are a concoction of gross ingredients that collectively cause horrifying effects in the long term. Some of these health risks include lung cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, lung disease (chronic bronchitis and emphysema), asthma attacks, stillbirth, infertility, type 2 diabetes, immune function, and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.

Benefits Of Not Smoking

If you are not easy to scare, perhaps some positive reinforcement will do the trick. According to the American Cancer Society [5], you’ll experience the benefits of a smoking-free lifestyle as early as 20 minutes later. You’ll look and feel better as your fingernails and teeth regain their color, clothes lose the rancid cigarette stench, your breath improves, and you start tasting food for what it is again.
Internally, your blood pressure will stabilize, your heart rate drops, lung function increases, circulation improves, wheezing and coughing reduce dramatically, and the risk of cardiovascular decreases by half – not to mention the amount of cash you’ll save.

Quitting smoking is clearly a no-brainer. So, what is holding you back? Take a step towards better health today – it all starts with the initiative.