Tobacco is used in many forms. Cigarettes are the main form of tobacco use. Cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco are also concerns for the health of the upper airway (mouth, pharynx, and larynx).

The habit of cigarette smoking begins during the teenage years and often becomes a lifelong addiction. By the time peer pressure to smoke is lessened, a smoker is often unable to quit. More smokers come from homes where come from homes where tobacco is used. The example that parents and other significant others set regarding tobacco use is powerful.

Tobacco contains the addictive substance nicotine. Cigarette smoking is a very strong reinforced habit, e.g., “a pack-and-half-a-day” smoker for 30 years has 1.5 to 2 million “bits” of nicotine. Therefore, it is difficult to stop cigarette smoking.

Cigarettes adversely affect more than the trachea, bronchi, and lung tissue. They may also affect the mouth, tongue, throat, esophagus, stomach, bladder, pancreas, skin, and kidneys. There is not one positive personal benefit to be gained by smoking and there are numerous hazards. Despite the tobacco industry’s arguments and no matter how glamorously smokers are portrayed in advertisements, smoking is unhealthy. This is no safe cigarette and no safe number of cigarettes that can be smoked. All smoking incurs health, psychosocial, and economic risks.

Nicotine affects the body paradoxically; it is both a stimulant and depressant. It elevates the blood pressure and increases the heart rate. The first dose stimulates the large bowel and curbs the appetite. Additional nicotine slows digestion. It lower skin temperature and constricts cardiac and peripheral blood vessels. If taken all at once, 60 mg. of nicotine causes death by paralyzing the respiratory center. Taken in small doses, it kills slowly. Nicotine is not only a chemical substances produced by burning cigarette. Tars, carbon monoxide, acids, ketones, phenols, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen oxide are just a few of the other hazardous chemicals presents in cigarettes with oxygen molecules and attaches to hemoglobin, thus aggravating hypoxemia (deceased blood oxygen level).

Reference

Luckmann, J. et.al (1987) Medical and Surgical Nursing. Merriam and Webster Inc.

By: LEDRICK C. TALASTAS T-1, Jose C. Payumo Jr. Memorial High School Naparing, Dinalupihan, Bataan