How fast can cigarettes kill you

For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U. News World Opinion Business. Share this —. Follow NBC News. The egg can't survive and, if left untreated, can be life-threatening for the mother. Smoking also causes reduced fertility, meaning it makes it more difficult to get pregnant.

The effects of smoking not only impact mom's health, but also that of her baby. Babies born too early or too small have increased risk of health complications and even death.

You're more likely to get type 2 diabetes if you smoke. Additionally, smoking increases the risk of complications once diagnosed with diabetes, such as heart and kidney disease, poor blood flow to legs and feet which leads to infections and possible amputation , blindness and nerve damage. Smoking can make you go blind.

It damages your eyes and can result in vision loss. Age-related macular degeneration is caused by smoking. It is the leading cause of blindness in adults ages 65 and older. Basically, all the cancers. For both cancer patients and survivors, those who smoke are more likely to develop a second primary cancer. And now we know that smoking causes at least a dozen cancers , including liver and colorectal, and reduces the survival rates for prostate cancer patients.

This November your donation goes even further to improve lung health and defeat lung cancer. Double Your Gift. Your tax-deductible donation funds lung disease and lung cancer research, new treatments, lung health education, and more. Join over , people who receive the latest news about lung health, including COVID, research, air quality, inspiring stories and resources. Thank you! The study suggests different possible causes for diminished effects in older smokers.

Notably, this study is also consistent with recent approaches to aging. Mamoshina et. Why are these findings important? Smokers' cough or excessive skin wrinkles on the face or discolorations on the fingers are easily detected without genomic or other sophisticated testing. But having scientific research confirm the age-accelerating effects of tobacco use is still very important. As the study notes, the populations of many countries are aging as part of a global demographic trend with a number of underlying causes.

This increases the number of individuals requiring medical care overall and, because the elderly often have more severe health problems, the number of individuals requiring more intense care. As a result, aging puts considerable stress on available health care resources, and aging caused by tobacco use only exacerbates these bourgeoning pressures.

We have found that as well in asking about smoking in the home or during pregnancy. It is not clear whether advanced aging is solely due to smoking cigarettes or exposure to cigarette smoke, or something found with many drugs of abuse. Volkow and her colleagues reviewed the literature on pathophysiological processes that may hasten aging and are particularly relevant to smoking, second hand smoke, drug use, and addictions.

Drug use may trigger early onset of age-related disease, due to drug-induced multi-system toxicity and perilous lifestyle, which remains mostly undetected and untreated. Learning more about biological aging effects should help us, over time, develop better preventative approaches and early detection practices and treatments, but as for now some evidence on aging is very clear: smokers have another disturbingly pressing reason to quit.

References :. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Merlo L. Substance Abuse.