The effects of smoking

All these components are in particular:

• Vascular function: smoking increases blood pressure, increases heart rate and damages arteries. The risks and deaths from coronary heart attack is twice as high in smokers;
• Respiratory function: smokers are exposed to disturbances in the whole respiratory system, including the risk of chronic bronchitis and the risk of lung cancer;
• Digestive function: nicotine increases the secretion of gastric acid.
• The limit tobacco supply of oxygen to the brain and muscles. He is responsible for headaches, dizziness, and decreased exercise tolerance.
• Addiction is confirmed in most smokers, with a feeling of lack off (tension, nervousness, irritability, anxiety or depression).

Risks known from passive smoking

It is now accepted that exposure to tobacco smoke increases the incidence of a number of diseases in adults (coronary event and lung cancer) in children with one or both parents smoke (lower respiratory tract infection, recurrent otitis, attacks in asthmatic children) and infants (sudden death, intrauterine growth retardation and low birth weight). The latest estimate, from 1999, evoked 2 500-3 000 deaths per year attributable to passive smoking. But with the strengthening of the ban on smoking in public places in 2007-2008, it is very likely that this figure is more or less a downward trend.