News Flash!

[JACKIE1-25-15]

  
• With the first puff, smoke passes through your mouth and leaves a thin brown film on your teeth. Toxic gases – like ammonia and formaldehyde – throw your immune system into a panic, causing inflammation all over your body.
  
• Then, as cigarette smoke gets into your windpipe, it temporarily slows your cilia – the tiny sweeper-hairs that work to clear your respiratory system of mucus and invasive particles.
  
• With the first puff of a cigarette, you also inhale nicotine – which immediately gets into your bloodstream through millions of tiny capillaries in your lungs. As that nicotine reaches your adrenal glands, your body gets a jolt of energy that raises your blood pressure and heart rate. Since your heart can’t fully relax between beats, you’ve just put yourself at higher risk for having a stroke.
  
• Another negative: Carbon monoxide – the toxic chemical in car exhaust – starts to build up in your blood. That makes it harder for your body to carry oxygen to your vital organs. At the same time, blood transports the nicotine to your brain – where nerve cells release a wave of the feel-good hormone dopamine. All that happens within the first 10 seconds.
  
• Still not convinced a single cigarette can hurt? Get this: Some 4,000 chemicals and toxins will still be attacking your body for up to 8 hours after your last puff, and a smear of gooey brown tar will be left in your lungs forever. Even worse, as your levels of dopamine plummet back to normal after smoking, your body will crave another nicotine high – even if you’re not aware of it. If you give in, you’ll be mentally hooked, which is how smoking becomes an addiction. Bottom line: Experts say that nicotine in cigarettes is just as addictive as heroin – even if you have just one smoke.

[Eric_L.]

Ha!  I have enough problems without putting that s in my body.

[Deena-A-Yenni]

Enjoyed this read immensely.  Confirmation that I will not smoke again.

[TerrieQuit]

Thanks, Jackie! Very informative!

Terrie  90  DOF

[cpsono]

SINAO and NOPE...the only way to do it!  Thanks, Jackie.    CP

[JACKIE1-25-15]

Your blog is whatever you want it to be.

[connect2amy]

I am early in my quit and I keep re-reading the harmful effects smoking has on your body. It's common to think of that one cigarette, but that one puff is in fact more dangerous. A whole cigarette seems substantial, but that one puff, as minute as it sounds, is a giant risk. It's a slippery slope. A lesson I have learned all to well from past failed attempts.