Key takeaways
- Smoking can cause organ failure over time.
- Chemicals in smoke can lead to severe organ damage.
- Quitting smoking reduces chances of damaged or dysfunctional organs.
- Consult a doctor for personalized advice on quitting smoking.
It’s no surprise that smoking is dangerous to you, but can smoking cause organ failure?
We know that smoking can cause damage to your lungs, mouth, heart, stomach, and even your gut health, but it takes years for any severe symptoms to surface for most people.
So, is it possible for smoking to cause organ failure? Let’s find out in this post.
Smoking and Your Mouth
Smoke will have to pass through your mouth and throat first before it heads to your lungs – some smokers even let the smoke linger in their mouth for a second or two before they inhale it. The ‘lingering’ is especially true for cigar smokers.
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Chemicals in cigarette smoke are known to cause oral cancer, gingivitis, accelerated tooth loss, bad breath, laryngeal cancer, soft and hard palate cancer, among other diseases in the long-term.
Smokers may also have darkened lips due to the tar and chemicals in smoke affecting their melanin levels.
Smoking and Your Lungs
Once you inhale after taking a hit, the smoke directly heads to your lungs. Exposure to smoke causes the cilia in the lungs to deteriorate and will irritate your bronchial tubes (the air passageways inside your lungs).
While smoke won’t necessarily injure your lungs immediately (it may only cause some bouts of incessant coughing, especially if it’s your first time smoking or you inhaled smoke from other sources), you may suffer from tuberculosis, COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, and chronic bronchitis as your years of smoking pile on.
Smoking and Your Heart
Smoking is a high risk factor for various heart and cardiovascular diseases. It can lead to the narrowing of blood vessels, increased heart rate, and higher blood pressure. The strain on your heart can cause long-term problems such as aneurysm due to blood vessel constriction.
Smoking also reduces blood oxygenation. The carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke binds to haemoglobin in the red blood cells more readily than oxygen does, so if you’re breathing the same amount of air, you aren’t getting all the oxygen into your bloodstream – a risk factor for atherosclerosis.
Smoking and Your Stomach
The chemicals in cigarettes can weaken the valve between your oesophagus and stomach – the primary causes of acid reflux and heartburn.
These chemicals also increase the likelihood of developing stomach ulcers. If you’re already on ulcer treatment and are in recovery, smoking will hinder the healing process and even create more ulcers due to increased acidity.
Smoking also interferes with the function of your digestive system. It can affect the production of saliva and stomach acid and also decrease blood flow to the digestive organs, which can lead to issues like stomach pain, gassiness, bloating, diarrhoea, and constipation
Smoking and Your Gut Health
The chemicals in cigarette smoke can disrupt the balance of bacteria in your gut and reduce the nutrients your body absorbs in the process.
Smoke from cigarettes and any other source is also associated with an increased risk of inflammatory bowel diseases, which ultimately lead to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. These two diseases can lead to colorectal cancer if not immediately addressed (and you don’t stop smoking).
Lastly, smoking can weaken the immune system in your gut, making you more susceptible to infections and other GI problems. It would cause changes in your gut irrigation and affect the microbiomes of friendly bacteria that help with digestion and combat foreign invaders and organisms.
Can Stopping Smoking Reduce or Prevent Organ Failure?
Absolutely. Without the dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke, you ultimately reduce the likelihood of organ damage on any part of your body. More importantly, you stop the continuous deterioration of your organs and the possibility that they might fail in the longer-term as you grow older.
How to Quit Today
Quitting is truly a challenging process for any smoker, but it’s far from impossible – especially today that reliable tools like nicotine replacement therapy (NRTs) and nicotine vaping products (NVPs) are available to help you stop smoking for good.
NRTs are readily available over-the-counter, but in the case of NVPs from pharmacies, you can only purchase them like prescription medications. Here’s the entire process you can go through to quit smoking today.
Go Through First-Line Solutions First
Some motivated smokers can handle cold turkey just fine and see success within a few tries, but oftentimes, smokers have strong withdrawals that can draw them back to lighting a stick.
That’s where NRT products come in. These are readily available and stocked at your local pharmacy.
NRT products are the most trusted quitting option available for motivated smokers. They might not imitate cigarettes, but they contain a small dose of nicotine that may be enough to alleviate your withdrawals. These come in the form of patches and gums for easy and convenient nicotine delivery.
While NRTs can be effective, they don’t work for everyone. If these haven’t done the trick for you, you may now be eligible for a nicotine prescription to use nicotine vaping products (NVPs).
Chat to a GP
As mentioned, NRT products have worked for many successful ex-smokers. But, you might have ingrained behaviours and triggers that only something that mimics a cigarette can successfully address, such as the hand-to-mouth motion, and needing something to use while having a drink with friends.
That is where NVPs become very handy in helping you fight the urge to consume tobacco.
You need a nicotine prescription before you can purchase NVPs, so you’ll need to consult with a GP to help you on your smoking cessation journey.
And, if your GP deems it necessary, they can write you a nicotine prescription for NVPs.
You can chat to your usual GP more about this.
Visit Your Local Pharmacy
Once you have your nicotine prescription, you can pop down to your local pharmacy. Over 2,200 pharmacies across Australia hold these products in-store, but any pharmacy can order these in for you if they don’t currently stock them.
Both your pharmacist and GP can advise you on how best to use the product, such as the initial setup, and the number of puffs to take when you feel withdrawals.
Summary
Can smoking cause organ failure? As a smoker’s years of consumption pile on, various parts of their body begin wearing out and enduring damage faster due to the dangerous effects of cigarette smoke, potentially leading to organ failure.
But, by stopping smoking, they can avoid organ failure as they grow older and improve the recovery and functionality of organs exposed to smoke.
If you need more help in stopping smoking, we can help.
Smokefree Clinic gives you access to many medically reviewed and trustworthy resources that can inform and aid you in your path to wellness, so have a look around!
If you’re ready to get started, Smokefree can connect you to friendly Australian healthcare professionals who excel in helping patients quit smoking for good, including via the use of pharmacy NVPs.