Every year, millions of people in our country lose their lives due to smoking. Do you really understand the harm of smoking?

"A cigarette after a meal is better than a living god. A few cigarettes at other times will keep you happy all year round." This is a classic saying of smokers. When I saw the "China Smoking Health Report 2020" released by the National Health Commission, I wondered if the majority of smokers could still laugh. As a thoracic surgeon, I felt extremely heavy.

How harmful is smoking?

There are more than 300 million smokers in my country, and the smoking rate among people aged 15 and above is 26.6%. Tobacco kills more than 1 million people in my country every year, and this number is expected to increase to 2 million per year in 10 years.

--- "China Smoking Health Harm Report 2020"

The respiratory system is the first point of contact for cigarettes and is the most harmful. As a thoracic surgeon, I always mention in every paper and lecture: "China is the country with the highest number of lung cancer and the number of smokers in the world." Obviously, this "first" is not glorious.

When talking about harmful substances in cigarettes, many people will mention nicotine. In fact, nicotine is only addictive, while the real carcinogens are tar, benzopyrene and other substances. Harmful substances inhaled into the lungs are deposited in the alveoli. After a long period of action, lung tissue cells are damaged and eventually cancer occurs.

The above figure shows the risk of death from lung cancer for smokers and non-smokers. It can be seen that the risk of death from lung cancer for smokers aged 75 is about 16%, while that for non-smokers is 0.5%, which is more than 30 times higher.

As the smoking population is getting younger, the average age of patients suffering from lung cancer is also getting lower and lower. Five years ago, it was rare to encounter lung cancer patients in their 30s in the outpatient clinic, but now there are more and more young lung cancer patients.

The harm caused by smoking is not just lung cancer. Cigarettes have been listed as a Class I carcinogen by the World Health Organization, but the harm of smoking is not as simple as cancer. Cardiovascular disease and lung disease caused by smoking are two complications that are often overlooked.

The burning of cigarettes produces carbon monoxide, which is inhaled into the human body and quickly combines with hemoglobin, which loses the opportunity to combine with oxygen. If this continues for a long time, smokers are often in a state of chronic hypoxia, which is followed by cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis.

In my country, among young and middle-aged people aged 30 to 44 who die suddenly from cardiovascular disease, 46% are related to smoking.

Are there more and more news about sudden death among young people around you? In addition to irregular lifestyles, cardiovascular disease caused by long-term smoking is a factor that cannot be ignored.

In addition, various lung diseases are also one of the main hazards caused by cigarettes. The harmful substances in the smoke adhere to the surface of the trachea, bronchi, and alveoli, thereby inducing diseases such as bronchitis, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which are common respiratory diseases in elderly patients.

In other words, the harm caused by smoking is not just lung cancer.

Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is equivalent to taking a hundred chest X-rays a year. Many people know that cigarettes damage the lungs, but few people know that cigarettes have radiation to the human body, and the radiation dose is not low.

In the outpatient clinic, we often encounter patients who refuse to undergo imaging examinations because they are afraid of radiation, but they do not know that the radiation caused by smoking is far greater than that caused by chest X-rays.

Cigarettes contain radioactive polonium. The polonium-210 produced by burning cigarettes is radiative to the human body. Each chest X-ray exposes the human body to about 0.02 millisieverts (a unit of radiation). If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, the cumulative radiation exposure in a year is about 2 millisieverts, which is roughly equivalent to 100 chest X-rays a year. What's worse is that the damage caused by polonium-210 to the respiratory mucosa is not transient. The radioactive substance easily adheres to the alveoli and causes continuous damage to the human body.

A small cigarette can cause great harm. If you are still smoking, for the health of you and your family, please quit smoking immediately.