They think smoking helps relieve stress when really it is the desire for cigarettes that creates most of the stress. Smoking is also stressful on the body. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals. Many of these are known to cause cancer of the lung, mouth, throat, bladder, kidney and stomach. Once diagnosed with lung cancer a person has only a 10 percent chance of surviving more than two years.
Ulcers are more common and less likely to heal in smokers than in non-smokers.
Also, smoking causes 80-90 percent of all emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Inhaling cigarettes prevents the throat from properly cleaning out germs, mucus and dirt from the lungs. This exposes the lungs to all kinds of infections, making it one of the reasons smokers use health care facilities 50 percent more than non-smokers. The carbon monoxide and nicotine in tobacco smoke causes blood vessels to narrow and blood pressure to rise. This means the heart has to beat faster and work harder to do its job.