Smoking is bad, right?
I mean, we’ve seen advertising telling us this for years now. Packs of cigarettes are sold in the U.S. with phrases like “this causes cancer” and “smoking kills,” while packs in Europe are sold with photos of deformed lungs on them.
Despite this evidence, people are still smoking. For anti-smokers and smokers, the arguments can be fraught.
Anti-smokers spout facts about how bad it is for you to smoke, but for a smoker, they think of how smoking makes them feel and it can be very hard to quit.
According to NHS, smoking is addictive because “nicotine alters the balance of two chemicals, called dopamine and noradrenaline, in your brain. When nicotine changes the levels of these chemicals, your mood and concentration levels change. Many smokers find this enjoyable.
The changes happen very quickly. When you inhale the nicotine, it immediately rushes to your brain, where it produces feelings of pleasure and reduces stress and anxiety. This is why many smokers enjoy the nicotine rush and become dependent on it.”
A video recently has gone viral that has all to do with smoking.
Amanda Eller, a nurse from North Carolina, uploaded a video on April 23, 2018, of two sets of lungs. The lungs on the left were that of a smoker of 20 years, while the lungs on the right were healthy lungs.
She captioned the video:
Cancerous, 1 pack per day for 20 years lungs 😳 versus heathy lungs. Still wanna smoke?
Like many controversial posts about smoking, this video has gone massively viral. In the video, you can see both sets of lungs being inflated and from the video, you can see that the lungs on the left are functioning at a fraction of the rate that the lungs on the right do.
The video has over 35 million views, 530,000 shares, and 8,000 likes in just under two weeks on Facebook.
Understandably so, the video has sparked a lot of conversation about how smoking impacts the body. Many people sharing the video are also telling stories of why and when they quit smoking.
The ugliness of the lungs in this video doesn’t even fully tell the impact that smoking has on your lungs. It can begin with just a cough and wheezing but escalate to fatal disease like emphysema and pneumonia. Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer (84%) and deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (83%).
It is important to note that smoking doesn’t just impact your lungs. Long-term smoking can also have an effect on your heart, teeth/gums, brain, eyes, and face.
What many people fail to realize is that smoking will take its toll on your entire body.
According to smokefree.gov, “Smoking can cause your skin to be dry and lose elasticity, leading to wrinkles and stretch marks. Your skin tone may become dull and grayish. By your early 30s, wrinkles can begin to appear around your mouth and eyes, adding years to your face.”
Do you smoke or does someone you love smoke? It is not too late to quit, you can get tips and advice on how to stop from the CDC here.
What do you think of the message behind these videos?
Please SHARE this powerful video with your friends and family on Facebook today.
