Smoking While Pregnant

Smoking while pregnant is harmful and this truth is well known to everybody. But everyone does not fully understand about the important concerns of smoking.

Every mother discloses herself and her unborn and growing baby of the uterine to vast health risks when she starts smoking. We may now try to outline and understand the main concerns about smoking while pregnant.

Smoking and pregnancy are the two different words that when forms or unite it makes very serious effects on the mother and the growing baby of the uterine.

It is again a well known fact that everybody knows that cigarette is containing thousands of harmful toxins like nicotine, carbon monoxide and cyanide (More or less 4000).

When one smokes while early pregnancy symptoms start, every inhale reaches baby through placenta of the mother who smokes and thus the toxic effect reaches both the mother and the baby. Most of these toxins are reaching the baby without any stop and the ill effects accumulating on the baby is not brought to the notice of the mother.

The phenomena ‘whether smoking cause wrinkles’ is very old. After the vast research work, scientifically, it has been proven that smoking does cause skin wrinkles. It speeds up the natural aging process of skin that is why wrinkles start to appear at relatively younger age.

Smoking doesn’t cause acute effects on the skin but you can see a significant difference, after ten year between the skin of smokers and non smokers. Another adverse effect of smoking generated wrinkles, these are irreversible.

Smoking is the second most leading cause of wrinkles after sun exposure. It inhibits the take up of Vitamin A and C which are essential for skin protection. It occurs because the nicotine of cigarettes promotes dehydration.

Nicotine limits the blood supply to the outermost layer of the skin by narrowing it. This obstacle creates the deficiency of oxygen and outer essential nutrients such as Vitamin A. It also harms collagen and elastin fibers of skin which gives the elasticity to the skin.

Heat generated from cigarette burning cause skin irritation around the eyes and put more strains on the eyes of the smoker. This strain increases the wrinkles on face especially around the eyes. Smokers also develop hollow cheeks with the extensive smoking.

The affects of smoking on skin make doctors to believe that there is a relation between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and wrinkles in mouth. If you have spent fifteen to twenty years with smoking you may feel that in your late 30’s your skin resemble to the nonsmoker who is in 50’s.

Remember! No cream or treatment have developed, till-to-date that can remove wrinkle caused by cigarette smoking, but the situation may get better is you quit smoking. If you are not going to quit and trying to get smoother skin through, you are just wasting your time and money as no cream, moisturizer or even surgical procedure can restore your smooth skin.

If you left your habit, it also has some additional benefits such as it improve the both quality and quantity of life and also prevent the risk of lung diseases and heart related issues, cancer etc.

After quitting smoking, you should concentrate on a healthy diet and regular physical workout. This intervention will make the blood circulation fast and will replenish the skin with more nutrition and oxygen. You should also limit the use of alcohol as it dehydrates skin too. Add a good supplement of Vitamin A and C as key ingredient to your diet as this will fill up the deficiency of elastin and collagen fiber. and avoid drinking alcohol or caffeine as this also dehydrates the skin.

A Finnish study has cast doubts on this well-known assumption that the unhealthy habit of smoking helps keep smokers thin.

The study finds that those teens, who smoke heavily, have higher chances of getting excess pounds in their old age.

“There is no direct evidence which proves smoking can cause obesity, however, people must consider this risk for their unhealthy smoking habits,” says Dr. Suoma Saarni, the lead author of the study.

However, different American experts are doubtful about these findings which are expected in the Journal of Public Health, February issue.

Smoking has been associated with thinness, not with obesity for a quite long time.  Saarni also pointed out that people when stop smoking, they often have to suffer from increased weight. There are some studies which reveal that many adult women and teens use smoking as a remedy for weight loss.

Most of smokers don’t know that even third-hand smoke can be dangerous for babies and pregnant women, a US study finds.

Different contaminations in cigarette smoke can stick to hair or fabrics, but in this survey of 1,500 people, it was noticed that even less than half of smokers were aware of that fact.

Only one third had a strict rule regarding not to smoke in their house, the journal Pediatrics report suggests.

Tommy’s, the UK baby charity, says that it is quite important for pregnant women to be alerted.

There is a lot of evidence, which shows that second-hand can be risky for health and especially for kids and most of parents seem to adopt a policy of not smoking in the presence of their kids.

But Jonathan Winickoff, a Professor at Massachusetts Hospital, says that it doesn’t provide complete protection.

Too much TV watching, video games and internet surfing makes children more likely to develop multiple health conditions such as obesity, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers compared 173 studies made since 1980 till to date to understand the reason that how electronic media cast effect on the children health.

The most studies, focused on TV but few looked for other electronic media as well. Most of the studies concluded that viewing of electronic media overall have adverse effects on health.

The studies give proves that children obsessed with media watching may get obese, start smoking and may involve in immature sexual activities than those who spend far less time in front of screen. Researcher also added, previous record also indicate the early drug and alcohol addiction and poor performance in class.

According to a new Dutch study, damage to the arteries of smokers’ children may detect in the early decades of their lives.

Dr. Cuno S.P.M Uiterwaal, who led the study, says: “many other studies have also found that smoking in families can harm children’s cardiovascular system, but our study adds that such effect may occur in very early life due to tobacco exposure.”

The finding has been reported in the December issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. The researchers used ultrasound to assess the thickness of the walls of carotid arteries (the major blood vessels to the brain) in 732 young adults with 28 year average age. The records unveiled that more than 60 percent of the fathers and 29 percent of the mothers used to smoke during the pregnancies.

Nicotine use will develop a tolerance in the body. So the addict needs more and more drugs to get the same effect. There comes smoking addiction which is extremely difficult to quit. Anyway if you quit from smoking addiction, your body undergoes the health problems like headache, hunger, depression etc. It is known as “withdrawal symptoms”. This is because of withdrawal of nicotine from the body.

Smokeless tobacco:

Harmful effects are produced in taking smokeless tobacco. Chewing tobacco will damage the gum tissue. The taste and smell sensitivity is reduced. They contain chemicals which cause cancer. The cancer may be in the mouth, larynx, esophagus etc.

A U.S. study finds that casual smokers have 16% higher risk than nonsmokers to become hazardous drinker and similarly, they are at 5% higher risk to develop alcohol-use disorders (AUDs).

The researchers from Yale University School of Medicine analyzed data on more than 5,000 adults( aged 18to 25) who were asked about their current smoking behavior, frequency of alcohol use, weekly alcohol intake, rates of hazardous drinking and AUD diagnoses.

The study has been published online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and it is expected to be published in print issue of the journal in December.

A sweeping report on tobacco suggests that depiction of smoking in movies urges teenagers to start smoking.

According to this report from the National Cancer Institute, more than $13 billion were spent on smoking-related advertising and promotion during 2005. The spending helped to boost overall tobacco use and it was absolutely contrary to tobacco industry claims of building brand loyalty.

ATLANTA: Almost half of nonsmoking Americans are still inhaling in cigarette fumes, but the proportion has decreased considerably since the early 1990s, according to an administration research released Thursday.

The major cause for the decline in cast-off smoke is the increasing number of laws and policies that proscribe smoking in workplaces, bars, restaurants and public places, stated by investigators associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another reason is the decrease in the number of teenage smokers. It has currently inched below 20 Percent, according to 2007 CDC data.