Many people think that young adults suffering with depression may be more apt to try cigarettes, but new research indicates the opposite is true. The Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati reviewed data on thousands of adolescents collected for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. They found that depressed teens weren't taking up smoking, but young smokers were developing depression. It was estimated that non-depressed teens that smoke face approximately a four times greater risk of developing depression than non-smoking teens. (Source - OnHealth)
Smokers get colds more frequently than non-smokers do and their recovery is also slower.
Ever light up in your car? Many road accidents are actually caused by smokers. Their attention gets diverted from the road while lighting up or when searching for cigarettes/cigarette ashes that have fallen on the floor.
Women who take oral contraceptives should not smoke. Two rare but life-threatening complications of taking oral contraceptives are heart attack or stroke. Those risks increase substantially with smoking.
Adolescent smokers can develop nicotine addiction much more quickly than thought possible. New research suggests dependence can occur even in teens who don't smoke on a daily basis. (Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.)
Besides nicotine, which causes addiction, your body absorbs more than 4,000 chemicals and dozens of carcinogens each time you use tobacco products. Some of these chemicals include carbon monoxide (car exhaust fumes which also keeps oxygen from binding to the blood), arsenic (poison), acetone (nail polish remover), and ammonia (floor/toilet cleaner that also facilitates absorption of nicotine and maintains dependence).
