How Smoking Harms Your Stomach

Feeling a bit of acid in your throat, or experiencing burning in your stomach or chest pain? If you’re a regular smoker, that might be why. 

Smoking doesn’t just mess with your lungs and skin; it can also seriously hurt your digestive system. Cigarette smoke can irritate and damage your stomach lining, intestines, and other parts of your digestive tract.

And it’s not just about discomfort—these issues can also lead to significant financial and health problems over time. Smoking-related digestive issues can lead to severe and sometimes life-threatening conditions.

Keep reading to find out more about how smoking impacts your digestive system and the other problems it can cause.

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Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)

The esophagus is one part of your digestive system that gets hit hard by smoking. It’s where you feel that burning sensation in your throat when you smoke a cigarette. 

All those chemicals in smoke can irritate it even more and lead to GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease). Smoking throws off the balance of the valve in your esophagus that’s meant to keep acid from backing up.

While GERD isn’t usually life-threatening, it can make you feel pretty miserable with constant regurgitation and chest pain. If the acidity keeps up, it can cause lasting damage to your esophagus, leading to esophagitis and making digestion a real struggle.

Heartburn

When you have GERD, you might feel a burning sensation in your chest that can spread to your upper abdomen. This often happens after eating or when you’re lying down or bending over.

Smoking can make GERD worse by lowering the bicarbonate levels in your stomach. Bicarbonate helps neutralise acid and protect your stomach lining, so when it’s reduced, you’re more likely to experience heartburn and discomfort.

Also, smoking can slow down digestion, causing food to hang out in your stomach longer than it should. This means your stomach has to churn out more acid to deal with the delay, making things even more acidic and raising the risk of causing some real damage.

Peptic Ulcer

Long-term smoking can lead to some serious stomach pain, often due to peptic ulcers. When you’re battling GERD and heartburn, your stomach lining takes a real beating from all the acid, making it more prone to damage and ulcers.

Usually, your stomach lining can repair itself with the help of a good diet and oxygen from the blood. But smoking throws a spanner in the works. 

It narrows your blood vessels, which messes with your immune system and makes you more likely to pick up bacteria that cause peptic ulcers.

On top of that, the impaired healing speeds up the growth of H. pylori in your digestive tract, making the situation even worse.

Liver Diseases

If the liver or stomach malfunctions, your body will have a hard time digesting food and managing your stomach acids. 

Chemicals in cigarette smoke have been a primary cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and an increased risk of liver cancer. 

The prolonged irritation and inflammation of the liver, caused by the larger production of free radicals due to smoking, will cause damage to the liver and impair its capacity to detoxify harmful substances. 

Also, if you keep smoking and drinking simultaneously, you’re at a higher risk of developing alcoholic liver disease. The organ gets strained continuously in breaking down the alcohol you consume while fighting off free radicals and inflammation.

When you stop smoking and drinking, you give your liver the best chance of recovery and keep your stomach working normally.

Crohn’s Disease

The minor digestive issues smokers endure above can get worse with prolonged exposure. GERD and heartburn can cause your esophagus, stomach, and also your intestines to get inflamed. 

Furthermore, the dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke will alter your gut biomes with prolonged exposure. 

These ‘friendly’ bacteria help your intestines absorb nutrients from food. Studies have shown that the biomes in the intestines of smokers are altered and reduce the population of these helpful bacteria.

Combined with a slower immune system response, more free radicals in your intestines, and inflammation, the stage is set for Crohn’s disease to develop. 

Don’t wait until you see blood in the toilet or feel frequent stomach aches and diarrhoea – stop smoking and prevent yourself from carrying a long-term health burden.

Increased Risk of Gallstones

Feel your abdomen or a side of your body getting sharply painful then ebbing into relief frequently? Those could be gallstones caused by cigarette smoking.

Your gallbladder stores the bile from your liver, an essential chemical that breaks down fat in what you eat. Chemicals in smoke alter the gallbladder’s function and reduce its motility or activity, causing bile to remain stagnant inside of it and produce gallstones. 

Moreover, smoking and higher levels of free radicals accelerate the hardening of bile by changing its chemical composition.

If you don’t want to feel the extreme pain of passing a gallstone in various parts of your body, stop smoking and have a healthy diet.

How It’s Easy to Quit Smoking for Good Today

Smoking is a danger to every part of your body. Fortunately, if you stop today, regardless of age, you can still recover physically and mentally from the grips of cigarettes and tobacco. Here are a few steps to get you on the right track.

Consult a GP

GPs have been key to helping many ex-smokers stop smoking for good. Their smoking cessation programmes are personalised and made with all your needs in mind. GPs can also prescribe the right amount of nicotine replacement products (NRTs) and nicotine vaping products (NVPs) from pharmacies to help you during the strongest of your withdrawals.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) Products

These lozenges, gums, and inhalers contain a small amount of nicotine to keep your withdrawals at bay. With a smaller dose of nicotine and the absence of cigarette smoke, they’ve played a significant role in smoking cessation and nicotine abstinence practised by many successful smokers.

Nicotine Vaping Products (NVPs)

NVP products sold in pharmacies are made under stringent pharmaceutical standards on the manufacturing process and ingredients, are toxicologically assessed for inhalation, are locally insured, and are specifically designed to help you stop smoking.

As a second-line solution, NVPs from pharmacies are helpful if NRT products, which don’t always work for everyone, fail to help a person trying to quit. 

Unlike their illegal counterparts sold in corner shops and tobacconists, pharmacy NVPs are made with your health in mind and not to profit off an addiction.

The latest Cochrane Review found high-certainty evidence that NVPs are more effective than NRT in helping people stop smoking.

Summary

It’s clear to see that smoking and your digestive system have a negative relationship. It also increases the risk of developing problems in your stomach, intestine, liver, and gallbladder, too. By stopping smoking, you give yourself the best chance of being able to eat and digest well as you grow older.

You’re probably reading this because you’re interested in knowing the effects of cigarettes on your digestive system. We hope this information was helpful. We can also help you quit smoking for good.

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 Australian healthcare professionals who excel in helping patients quit smoking for good.

Link Reference

• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17019-gerd-or-acid-reflux-or-heartburn-overview
• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/10349-gastritis
• https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/smoking-and-the-digestive-system
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4081679/#:~:text=Oxidative%20stress%20represents%20an%20imbalance,functional%20abnormalities%20in%20the%20liver.
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8962244/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4977331/
• https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/0016-5085(86)90386-0/pdf
• https://www.cochrane.org/news/latest-cochrane-review-finds-high-certainty-evidence-nicotine-e-cigarettes-are-more-effective