What Smoking Does To The Body Vs What Vaping Does

It’s pretty common knowledge to most about the harmful effects that smoking cigarettes can have on the human body. The sheer amount of chemicals that are produced when a cigarette is ignited and then ingested into the body is mind blowing, and the number goes well into the thousands, and some of these chemicals are even toxic and can lead to deadly diseases which can in turn become fatal.

But it’s not that common knowledge about what Vaping does to the body, which is what I’m going to endeavour to explain within this article as once you quit smoking and start vaping, the effects that smoking has previously had on your body will begin dwindling down and reversing essentially over time, decreasing your risk of contracting deadly diseases as well as making you feel a lot fitter and healthier as well!

How Smoking Effects Life Span

As I mentioned at the top of this blog, most people know that smoking causes serious harm to the body due to the sheer volume of chemicals that are produced once a cigarette is lit, and to put it bluntly – smoking kills.

It’s estimated that an average smokers lifespan will be shortened by 10 years compared to someone who is not a smoker, and when you reach the age of 40 years old, each additional year that you smoke there after will shorten your life span by 3 months. It’s pretty scary when it’s put in front of you like that isn’t it!

Smoking still to this day, as it has been for the longest time, is the single biggest cause of avoidable death not only in the UK but also globally as well. Worldwide, over 7 million people die every single year from smoking related illnesses/diseases and going a bit more closer to home, 76,000 people die every year in the UK from smoking related illnesses/diseases.

These numbers have remained “stable” as to say for the last few years, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be going down despite the hope of some countries Government’s that it would, simply because quitting smoking is not an easy task and many people won’t even attempt it and continue with their potential habit of a life time.

Smoking And Deadly Diseases

I’ve mentioned about smoking related illnesses and diseases, and now I’m going to look at this topic more in depth and explain just exactly what diseases Smoking can cause.

Cancer

The obvious one to start with, and everyone knows this I would expect, but Cancer is the biggest deadly disease that smoking can cause. The reason for this is a lit cigarette produces over 5000 chemical compounds, which are harboured in the smoke emitted from a lit cigarette. And of this 5000, it’s proven that at least over 60 of them are toxic and known to cause cancer. It can cause;

• Throat and Mouth Cancer
• Lung Cancer
• Stomach Cancer
• Pancreatic Cancer
• Liver Cancer
• Cervical Cancer

This is just some of the more common areas that Cancer can set in, but there are more and this is just proof just how deadly smoking can be.

Heart Disease

Smoking can cause serious problems for your heart and the circulation of blood pumping around your body. This is primarily down to the fact that Carbon Monoxide is produced from a lit cigarette and this is obviously inhaled into the body when smoking a cigarette. Carbon Monoxide damages your blood vessels, causes your heart to work a lot harder than usual so in turn puts your blood pressure up, and increases your heart rate also which could possibly lead to blood clots.

Smoking can lead to heart disease and also increase your chance of a heart attack quite significantly also. And on top of this, your chances of a stroke are SIX TIMES higher than what the chances of a non smoker having one is.

Lung Disease

Of course, smoking heavily affects the lungs, as this is where you’re inhaling this toxic smoke into directly and it damages everything on the way to the lungs as well. It can cause damage to your airways by causing irritation and inflammation, thus making it harder to breathe normally.

This is how lung diseases such as Emphysema and COPD are contracted, due to the aggravating properties of cigarette smoke. And with the damage being caused to your airways as well, you’re going to be leaving yourself prone to infections such as Pneumonia and it’s also common to end up with Asthma as a result of smoking as well.

Smoking And Your Appearance

So we’ve discussed what smoking does to your body on the inside, but what about the effects it can have on your body externally?

Staining Of Fingers/Nails

If you’re a smoker, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve got discolouration to your fingers and nails due to smoking. Probably a a tinge of yellow/brown colour and this is from the Nicotine which is in cigarette smoke.

Nicotine reacts with the heat of a cigarette and also the other chemicals and can cause discolouration which is not easy to get rid of. It’s not a good look and can make people quite self conscious about their appearance. Nicotine from an E-Cigarette doesn’t cause this which I’ll explain later in this article.

Oral Health

Smoking heavily affects your oral health as well. This is done by causing bad breath, which is unpleasant to experience for yourself and others can easily smell it on your breath as well. The nicotine can also cause discolouration and staining to your teeth like what it does to your fingers and nails.

And on top of all that, it can also lead to gum disease which can cause to rotting and painful gums or even in some extreme circumstances a potential loss of teeth.

The Effects Vaping Has On Your Body

So we’ve now covered almost all of the negative effects that smoking has on your body, and as you can see by the list, it’s pretty extensive and most of these effects aren’t pleasant and could ultimately cause death like it does to millions of people globally every single year.

When people hear about what cigarettes do to the body, they automatically assume that E-Cigarettes does the same because they have “cigarette” in the name, but this really couldn’t be farther from the truth if it tried.

Using an E-Cigarette and E-Liquid has next to no comparisons to smoking an actual cigarette, because they are completely different and the harm/risk factor involved in using each of these things are absolute worlds apart.

When using an E-Cigarette, there is absolutely no combustion involved, like there is with smoking a cigarette or tobacco. The e-liquid inside of a tank attached to an e-cigarette is merely heated up and this is what creates the vapour. Vapour is completely different to cigarette smoke, where as it’s made up of particles that disperse with ease, as apposed to cigarette smoke which has a tendency to linger around.

Vapour that is produced from the E-Cigarette does not have the same harmful chemicals as what cigarette smoke does, meaning the harm and risk factor is greatly reduced when Vaping therefore it won’t have the same effects on your body like what smoking does.

Switching from smoking cigarettes to using an e-cigarette will start to greatly reduce your risk of contracting deadly smoking related diseases like I’ve mentioned above. This is done by not consuming and ingesting the thousands upon thousands of harmful chemicals that are found in cigarettes, as you’ll be using E-Cigarettes instead which have next to none of these!

There are a small amount of similar chemicals present in both, but the volumes in E-Cigarettes is so miniscule compared to what it is in cigarettes, it’s not actually considered a risk/harmful

Nicotine Doesn’t Cause Cancer

If you’ve read any of my previous articles surrounding this subject or the subject of nicotine, you would know by now that Nicotine does not cause cancer and it is not one of the chemicals that’s classed as “harmful” in cigarette smoke.

Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical, which is what people become hooked to when smoking cigarettes, and many disbelievers think that this is one of the harmful chemicals in cigarettes that causes cancer but this is wrong, so very wrong to believe!

There has not been any proven evidence to show that nicotine can cause cancer, and it’s actually what has been used for many years to help people get off smoking in the form of Nicotine Replacement Therapy. Nicotine Replacement Therapy comes in different forms such as nicotine patches, nicotine gum and nicotine sprays and all of these things have been prescribed by Doctors to patients wanting to quit smoking for quite a while now. So if Nicotine was in fact harmful to a person, why would Doctor’s be willingly prescribing it to people?

Conclusion

We now reach the conclusion of this blog, and I hope this has been informative and helpful to you to give you more of a clear understanding of the harmful effects that smoking has on the body. It’s really eye opening seeing all of the different factors laid out in front of you like what I have done here, and quite shocking when you think just how much damage smoking can cause and the impact it is having on mortality rates worldwide.

And this should have also helped give you more of a clear understanding if you didn’t already have it on the effects vaping has on the body, which are little to none when compared to smoking! The take away here is that Nicotine is not one of the harmful chemicals that are in cigarettes. Yes it is addictive, but not harmful, so using an E-Cigarette to still get your nicotine fix is the most logical approach rather than continuing to smoke!