“How does smoking affect your lungs?”

Smoking causes damages of the airways and the small sacs where the oxygen interchange with carbon dioxide occurs. This destruction causes the lung to lose the elasticity and its more cumbersome and stressful to get rid of the air in the lungs (Emphysema, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD). In addition, smoking destroys the cilia in the bronchioles (cilia = small, tiny hairs), and they are responsible of the expulsion of mucus from the lungs. The alveoli (small ending sacs), which the sac walls (called septa), is where the exchange of the oxygen occur, also give the recoil quality of the lungs to expel the carbon dioxide. So, less surface area for oxygen occurs and the patient present with shortness of breath, and the end result is walking with an oxygen tank that supplies oxygen to the patient Thank you.

It can damage lung and heart and cause cancer.

When you inhale, all of the cigarette byproducts are sucked into the lungs. The byproducts can harm the lungs and may result in cancer.

RB Thomas, MD