Smoking And Lung Cancer

A Brief History Of Smoking

The history of smoking goes far back to 6000 BC when it was being used by the Native Americans. It would be interesting to know that Rodrigo de Jerez became the first smoker in the European history who was a fellow explorer of Christopher Columbus. People started using the leaves of tobacco for smoking and chewing and so on and so forth the trend just continued and people started using it and now it is to the point where most people are smoking all around the world.

Myth About Low Tar Cigarettes

Most people believe that the cigarettes, which have low tar would not cause lung cancer. This is a completely wrong statement. These statements just get an air because it makes people believe that it would not cause any harm to them and they do not quit smoking. Some say that smoking tobacco without the paper prevents a person from having cancer, but the experts believe that when a person inhales any amount of tobacco will be predisposed to have the lung cancer.

Hazards Of Passive Smoking

The cigarette smoke is as hazardous to smokers as it is to nonsmokers. When the nonsmokers are in an environment where they come in contact with the smoke of cigarette, they inhale that and that affects the epithelial lining of their lungs and then become predisposed to the risk of developing a lung cancer. There was a study conducted, which showed that a nonsmoker spouse when marries a smoker is at 30% increased risk of developing lung cancer than the nonsmoker spouse. Any environment where the nonsmokers come in contact with the tobacco smoke are at increased risk of developing a lung cancer. This is the reason that more and more countries are taking this very seriously and smoking is being banned at work places and now even in public places. One can say that there are two classes of people, smokers and nonsmokers.

Relationship Between Smoking And Lung Cancer

There are a number of studies being conducted to determine the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The conclusion that these studies came up with was that the smoking is not only causing lung cancer but it is also causing many other cancers or putting a person at risk of developing those cancers, which are as follows: Pancreatic cancer, cancer of the kidney, esophagus, bladder, mouth, pharyngeal cancers and laryngeal cancers. There was also a study conducted that suggests that there is a strong relationship between smoking and cancer of cervix.

On What Factors Does It Depend That A Person Will Have Lung Cancer?

Since it is a well-established fact that smoking is related to lung and other cancers, there are factors on which it depends that whether a person is truly going to have lung cancer through cigarette smoking actively or passively. These factors depend on for how long the person has been smoking and for how much time he has been exposed to cigarette smoke. The time span is the main factor that counts a lot in the development of cancer in a person.

How Does The Cancer Develops (Mechanism)?

It is really important to know that how a cancer of the lung develops with smoking so as to increase awareness and prevent that from happening in the first instance. For that reason we must know the anatomy of lung.

Anatomy Of Lung: The anatomy of lung starts from trachea, which has the voice box or larynx and then the trachea forms the main bronchus and then it divides into left and right bronchus, which further divides and subdivides to form bronchioles and the last unit of the lung anatomy is alveoli, which are also known as air sacs. The bronchus is lined by hair like structures known as cilia and the main function of the cilia is that they propel the mucus from the lung upward so that it can be expelled out and it just acts as a cleaning or clearing mechanism for our lungs.

Loss Of Cilia From Smoking: The smoking just causes the loss of the protective lining of the lungs, which is cilia, which in prevents the hazardous substances to be cleared from the lungs.

Deposition Of Harmful Substances: When the lungs have lost their capability of clearing the harmful substances, these substances start getting deposited on the inner lung lining and from there these carcinogenic substances are absorbed into the lungs.

Alteration Of Cell Morphology: The deposition of the carcinogenic substances (cigarette smoke) when absorbed by the cells, lead to the change in the nature of the cells slowly and gradually and this change then leads to the development of cancer.

Quitting Smoking Can Prevent Lung Cancer

The studies that are conducted to analyze the benefits of quitting smoking have concluded that smoking damages the lung tissue and when a person gives up smoking, the tissue revives back to its original form. So this shows that the people who have quit smoking are now at a very low risk of developing of lung cancer. There is one thing that needs to be kept in mind, which is that where a person is quitting smoking, one should also prevent from being in an environment where one would be exposed to tobacco smoke so they do not inhale the smoke passively. So the statistics say that the smokers who quit smoking are at a reduced risk of one third of occurrence of lung cancer in them.

Quitting Smoking Can Prevent Other Lung Diseases

When smoking is being quit, the chance of having lung disease just reduces greatly.

Quitting Smoking Can Prevent Complications Of Pregnancy

According to the recent data furnished by the researchers is that the women who quit smoking during their first trimester are at no risk of developing complications during their pregnancy and there are no effects on the fetus such as low birth weight or fetal abnormalities etc.

LUNG CANCER

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