Benefits of Smoking

This article was composed by me for my college magazine. For obvious reasons, it was not accepted. So all you sutta lovers...enjoy


Statutory Warning: Cigarette Smoking is Injurious to Health


Smoking is bad for you. Anyone who has watched TV or gone to health class knows this. But everyone also knows that cheeseburgers are bad for you and continue to scarf them down. The benefits of cheeseburgers are obvious: delicious, juicy, hearty taste. What are the benefits of smoking? All you hear about all day is why you shouldn't smoke, and how bad it is for your health. Then why is everyone smoking in the first place, and how do smokers come up with thousands of reasons not to quit.

The dangers of smoking cigarettes are often greatly exaggerated while the benefits are downplayed. Now, smoking cigarettes is certainly bad for you physically overall, but the threat of diseases such as lung cancer or emphysema are made out to be worse than they actually are. Surprisingly, the tobacco plant appears to have more to offer our bodies than a guarantee of certain death. Although the health benefits of smoking are far outweighed by the many very dire risks, tobacco may provide alternative relief or prevention for some diseases in certain individuals.

The most fascinating and widely recognized health benefit of smoking is its ability to seemingly alleviate symptoms of mental illnesses, including anxiety and schizophrenia. The treatment of schizophrenia isn't the only positive effect that nicotine has on the brain. A series of very interesting studies from multiple academic sources confirms that the risk of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease is surprisingly higher in non-smokers than in smokers. Compared to people who had never smoked and were considered to have ''normal'' Parkinson's disease risk, former smokers had a 22-percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease and current smokers had a 73-percent lower risk. But as Evan L. Thacker from Harvard School of Public Health puts it, ''it is not our intent to promote smoking as a protective measure against Parkinson's disease, obviously smoking has a multitude of negative consequences. Rather, we did this study to try to encourage other scientists...to consider the possibility that neuro-protective chemicals may be present in tobacco leaves.''

The University of Melbourne confirmed the claims made by many smokers that tobacco itself is a strong appetite suppressant, and many use it to self-treat compulsive overeating disorders or obesity. Many smokers experience weight loss and decreased appetite after they begin smoking.

Cigarette smoking has also been linked to a decrease in risk of certain inflammatory disorders, since nicotine itself appears to be an anti-inflammatory agent. The department of gastroenterology at the University Hospital of Wales conducted a number of in-vitro studies to confirm and explain the decreased risk in ulcerative colitis (a potentially severe digestive disorder) in individuals who smoke cigarettes. Perhaps most shockingly, tobacco smoke's anti-inflammatory effects may actually provide some benefits to children who are exposed to secondhand smoke. While this is certainly not worth at-home experimentation, one astonishing study conducted in Sweden observed two generations of Swedish children and found that the children of smokers had lower rates of allergic rhinitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema, and food allergies.

For lung cancer specifically, as long as you quit smoking before your cells turn cancerous, then you are basically in no danger. Once you quit smoking it takes only three days for the cilia in your respiratory system to start regenerating and in turn the cilia once again start to protect your lungs from harmful pollutants. The cilia normally return to their full functioning capacity about six months after quitting smoking. This shows that the effect that smoking has on your body is largely reversible, assuming that you quit before you actually have malignant cancer cells.

A study printed in 2001 by Michael Houlihan showed that smoking cigarettes, or more specifically the nicotine in cigarettes, has a positive effect on short-term memory. A "denicotinized" cigarette and a "nicotine-yielding" cigarette were used to show the difference between the amount of nicotine ingested and the effect on short-term memory. This study basically showed that smoking shortens response time and it also positively affects event-related potentials. The response time was more greatly affected so, this shows that nicotine shortens response time by affecting response-related processes.

Although all of these benefits can only be reaped after you quit smoking, as long as you do that in a timely manner, you should be fine. Here are some facts from past U.S. Surgeon General's Reports: Less than five days after quitting smoking it will be noticeably easier to breathe because the lungs can now hold more air. One year after quitting the risk of heart disease is reduced to one-half of the risk of a continuing smoker. Five years after quitting, the risk of a stroke is equal to that of a nonsmoker. Ten years after quitting the lung cancer death rate is half of that of continuing smokers. There was a man who smoked unfiltered cigarettes for twenty years before quitting. Now, his lungs look as healthy as those of someone who had never smoked in his life. So enjoy smoking now; just be sure to quit before too late, so as not to miss out on the wonderful regenerative qualities of the human body.