Emphysema and Cigarette Smoke
ByNot everyone who has emphysema got it from smoking cigarettes. And not every cigarette smoker will develop emphysema. But if you do smoke, you make yourself very vulnerable to this condition.
My dad hated the fact that I smoked cigarettes. At the time I was young and foolish, and I didn’t know anything about emphysema. His story about it is what eventually led me to quit smoking. My dad worked in an auto plant, along with this other guy who was a smoker. He told me how this guy was always “out of breath.” Even though he wasn’t doing anything physically strenuous, he breathed heavy like he had just run up a flight of stairs. Now, I hate that feeling of being out of breath, and I can’t imagine the pain of feeling constantly winded.
When I was in college, I had a professor who was also a medical doctor. He wouldn’t allow anyone to smoke in his auditorium (this was back in the day when you could smoke in class.) His reason: he hated what cigarette smoke does to your lungs. “Oxygen,” he said, “doesn’t go directly into your blood. Rather, it must first be dissolved in a mucus medium that lines your lungs breathing surface, and from there the hemoglobin in your blood binds with the oxygen that you breathe in.”
That is what makes that layer of crud, caused by chronic smoking, so dangerous. That crud forms a barrier between the air you breath and the mucus lining on your lungs. You then have to breathe faster in order to get more air for your oxygen-starved body.
Emphysema, in short, is a reduction in the ability of the air sacs in your lungs to allow oxygen to get to your blood stream. If you smoke, you are six times more likely to develop this condition than people who don’t smoke. You can also be at risk by chronically breathing in second hand smoke.
My mom is an ex smoker and now suffers from emphysema. As time passes she continues to struggle more and more to breath. Of course there are better days than others. I think it might help her and others to be able to talk to each other about what they are experiencing. They are the only ones that can relate to what is happening with them on a daily basis. Anyone willing to give and recieve support from others?
[...] The second motive I had for quitting was the realization that I could get emphysema from smoking. (I’ll go into greater detail about emphysema in a future blog post, and you’ll [...]
[...] these few blog posts on the dangers of cigarette smoking is to make smokers aware of just how truly dangerous tobacco smoke is, so that they will be armed with a strong, personal reason to quit [...]