Is quitting smoking suddenly harmful to your health? Is vaping healthy? 7 common rumors about smoking that have harmed many people

It has become a consensus that smoking is harmful to health. Today is World No Tobacco Day. Scientific rumors have been debunked to review the various misunderstandings about "the harm of smoking and quitting smoking", hoping to help everyone strengthen their determination to stay away from the harm of cigarettes.

1. Will quitting smoking suddenly harm your health?

Let me first state the conclusion. Quitting smoking is definitely healthier than continuing to smoke, and the claim that quitting smoking is harmful to your health comes from some misunderstandings.

When quitting smoking, smokers can no longer experience the pleasure brought by smoking, which causes a craving for nicotine and a strong desire to smoke. They also experience a series of withdrawal symptoms, including craving, anxiety, depression, restlessness, headache, increased salivary gland secretion, inattention, sleep disorders, increased blood pressure and increased heart rate, etc. Some patients may also experience weight gain.

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However, the above withdrawal symptoms are normal phenomena in the process of quitting smoking. Although they look like "illness", they will not cause adverse consequences to the body. Now there are many smoking cessation drugs that can alleviate these uncomfortable symptoms.

In addition, smoking inhibits the movement of bronchial cilia. After quitting smoking, the excretion function of cilia is restored and smokers who quit smoking may cough and produce phlegm. This is normal and not a sign of illness.

To sum up, quitting smoking has only benefits and no harm, and it is better to quit smoking sooner rather than later!

2. As long as it doesn’t enter the lungs, smoking is harmless?

First of all, the so-called "smoke does not enter the lungs" is impossible to do. When smoking, the mouth, trachea, and lungs must maintain a negative pressure inhalation state. It is impossible to keep the smoke completely in the mouth without entering the lungs.

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Moreover, even if most tobacco smoke can be controlled to enter only the mouth, the various harmful substances in tobacco can also cause damage to the mouth, causing oral ulcers, yellowing and rusting of teeth, and periodontitis, oral leukoplakia (precancerous lesions), and even lip cancer and oral cancer. Carcinogens remaining in the mouth will enter the gastrointestinal tract with saliva and food, increasing the risk of malignant tumors such as gastric cancer; harmful substances adhering to the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose, pharynx, and throat will also be transported to the whole body through the blood, causing harm.

Moreover, “only inhaling without swallowing” will also promote and aggravate the formation of smoking habits and cause the harm of secondhand smoke!

3. Low content of harmful substances

Are cigarettes “safe cigarettes”?

Some people think that thick cigarettes can be replaced with thin "ladies' cigarettes" so that the amount of toxic substances is less and the damage to health is less. But this view is not correct.

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Tar content is not an indicator for evaluating the harmfulness of cigarettes. There is no evidence that "low-tar cigarettes" are less harmful than ordinary cigarettes. The harmful substances in tar only account for 0.6% of the harmful components of cigarettes. It has little significance for the change in the amount of harmful components released after tobacco combustion. Reducing the amount of tar will not reduce toxic substances. There is no clear correlation between the harmful components in smoke (such as carcinogens such as nitrosamines) and the amount of tar.

In addition, the reduction of tar content will reduce the "euphoria" of smoking to a certain extent. In order to "make up" for this deficiency, smokers usually consciously or unconsciously increase the number of cigarettes they smoke per day, increase the amount of smoke they smoke per puff, and inhale deeper into the lungs, which increases the possibility of lung adenocarcinoma. After the tar content is reduced, in order to ensure the "flavor" of cigarettes, tobacco companies add a variety of additives to cigarettes, which also brings more potential risks to health.

4. Repeatedly quitting smoking means that your will is not firm?

It is commendable to have the courage to quit smoking, and there is no need to blame yourself if you relapse. Because smoking addiction is a chronic addictive disease, quitting smoking is a long process, and most people have to try many times before they can quit successfully.

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In addition, the time it takes to quit smoking varies from person to person, depending on their tobacco dependence, lifestyle, living environment, and personal will. Generally, it takes 3 to 6 months. Clinically, successful smoking cessation generally refers to not smoking for three consecutive months, also known as "clinical cure." After that, the person enters the maintenance period (also known as the maintenance period) after successful smoking cessation.

You must continue to not smoke a single cigarette and resolutely refuse to smoke occasionally in order to prevent relapse and eventually quit smoking successfully. The process of quitting smoking is indeed difficult, but with the support and encouragement of relatives and friends and the help of professional doctors, the success rate of quitting smoking will be greatly increased.

5. Can e-cigarettes be a “safe alternative” to cigarettes?

With all kinds of publicity, e-cigarettes have become a "healthy product" in the eyes of many consumers. However, there is sufficient evidence to show that e-cigarettes are not safe and can cause harm to health.

Studies have found that cells exposed to e-cigarette smoke extracts are more susceptible to DNA damage and death than unexposed cells. E-cigarette filling liquids of various flavors/brands and their aerosols are cytotoxic. These studies provide sufficient evidence to show that there are harmful substances in e-cigarettes.

Of course, due to the large differences in e-cigarette product types, production processes, quality supervision measures, and harmful substance detection methods, the comparability between research results is very poor. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a systematic evaluation system in the field of e-cigarettes.

However, it is still true to say that e-cigarettes have health risks or are harmful to health. In addition, we must be vigilant that many e-cigarette vendors will package e-cigarettes as fashionable electronic products that can refresh the mind and sell them to teenagers. On the one hand, this will affect health, and on the other hand, it may induce teenagers to start smoking cigarettes.

6. Smoking can prolong life because nicotine can fight aging?

Smoking is of course harmful to health, let alone prolonging life. The idea that nicotine can slow down aging, which is widely circulated online, has only been confirmed in mouse experiments. In the absence of human experimental results, we must be cautious about the "effects" shown in animal experiments. Therefore, it is a bit unrealistic to talk about smoking improving the symptoms of aging.

There is a principle in scientific research that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Whether it is NMN or nicotine, to determine whether it can really prolong life, more powerful evidence is obviously needed. At present, all the so-called evidence in this regard comes from animal experiments such as nematodes and mice.

The corresponding fact is that the scientific community has already had sufficient solid research evidence to prove that nicotine itself is a toxic substance that is harmful to health. Whether it is ingested through tobacco or other forms, it has a certain degree of toxicity.

7. Can smoking make people look handsome?

On the contrary, there is a lot of evidence that smoking directly affects your appearance. The toxic substances produced when smoking can act directly on the skin on the one hand, and indirectly on the skin by entering the body on the other hand.

The chemicals produced during tobacco combustion can eventually enter the blood circulation. Once in the blood, these chemicals will circulate throughout the body's various tissues and organs, including the skin. This can cause skin ischemia, changes in skin tissue collagen content, inhibition of estrogen synthesis and a series of other negative effects, thereby promoting skin aging.

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In addition, the repeated inhalation during smoking can cause the cheeks to sink in, and the habitual mouth corner movements and long-term subconscious eye deviation caused by smoke stimulation can cause wrinkles, which also aggravates the degree of skin aging to a certain extent, not to mention that smoking is related to various skin injuries and even skin cancer. In addition, "Research Progress on the Effect of Smoking on the Pathogenesis of Skin Diseases" pointed out that smoking is one of the main exogenous factors causing hair loss.

Moreover, “smoking = handsome” is actually, to a large extent, a side effect of the classic scenes of celebrities smoking in some film and television works in the past. As the hazards of cigarettes and secondhand smoke have become widely known, most people have a negative attitude towards smoking, especially smoking indoors, and are eager to avoid it. How can this be considered handsome?

In conclusion, for the sake of health, the correct choice we make when facing cigarettes is actually very simple and clear: Not smoking yet? Don’t start. Are you a smoker? Quit as soon as possible. Anyone else smoking? Stay away from it.

Source: Science Refutes Rumors

Review丨Zhang Yu, researcher/PhD, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, national health science expert