Smoking: Meaning, Diagnosis and Overview

What is Smoking?

• Smoking is an addiction. Nicotine is a drug that is naturally present in the tobacco plant and is primarily responsible for a person?s addiction to tobacco products, including cigarettes. During smoking, nicotine enters the lungs and is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and travels to the brain in a matter of seconds.
• Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and affecting the health of smokers in general. Smoking is very bad for health.
• Smoking is also harmful to the unborn foetus. If a pregnant woman smokes, her foetus is at an increased risk of miscarriage, early delivery (prematurity), stillbirth, infant death, and low birth weight.

Recovery Time

• One has to quit smoking to get recovered from the symptoms of smoking.
• Within a few weeks, people who quit smoking have improved circulation, produce less phlegm, and do not cough or wheeze as often.
• Within several months of quitting, people can expect substantial improvements in lung function.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis is done by the physical examination of the patient.

FAQs prepared by doctor

Q1.  What is Passive smoking? How is it harmful?
Breathing in someone else cigarette smoke is passive smoking or secondhand smoking). It can increase your risk of lung cancer and coronary heart disease in adults. It is also particularly harmful for children. Children who breathe in second hand smoke have an increased risk of Cot death (sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS), asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia, Meningitis, middle ear disease, such asotitis media and hearing loss.

Q2.  How does smoking affect my current health issues?
If you have been diagnosed with an ongoing, incurable disease, you are especially vulnerable to the health effects of tobacco, and quitting is even more urgent. Smokers with chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, COPD, and asthma can experience increased hospitalization time, complications, and increased risk of death. Smoking can put you at drastically higher risk for symptoms and, in some cases, decrease the effectiveness of your medications.