Teen Health Issues

Teenagers smoke cigarettes as a part of trend. They neglect the fact that cigarette smoking is harmful to health and that it increases the chances of cancer and other related smoking cancers. Smoking is very harmful for teenagers because their body will be tender and in the initial stage of growing. Smoking can develop weaker hearts, smaller lungs and other health complications.

Passive smoking can also cause chronic respiratory problems, coronary heart diseases and lung cancer. Smoking a cigarette daily reduces the lifespan of an individual by 11 minutes. It is an alarming news for the nation that teenagers are more in the list of people smoking. Approximately two and a half million people die in United States of America every year due to smoking severely.

Why Teenagers Opt to Smoke:
It is surprising that there are increasing number of teens who are addicted to tobacco. Parents and teachers should come up with steps that will help teenagers quit from smoking. For this we need to understand why teenagers start to smoke. This will help in resolving the problem easily, once the root cause is known. Teenagers opt to smoke due to many reasons such as pressure from family, school or love.

Teenagers get attracted very easily to the commercials that promote the cigarettes. Parents are the root cause for this problem because teenagers tend to ape their parents and start to smoke at the early age itself. They smoke cigarettes to experiment, for self image and when they experience boredom.

Affect on the Body:
• Many cancer related deaths are caused due to smoking.
• The carbon monoxide present in the cigarette reduces the oxygen content in the blood.
• The functioning of vital organs such as brain, heart and lungs get affected due to the lack of oxygen levels.
• It also causes stroke and cardiovascular diseases. It also causes physical effects which include the reduction of stamina, endurance and performance.
• Smoking reduces vitamin A in the body making you look older.

How to Quit:
• Teenager once get addicted to smoking find it very hard to quit because of mental, physical and emotional side effect.
• Teenagers may feel more craving, irritable, anxiety and intestinal disorder. They feel some kind of changes in their emotions, temper and ability to focus.
• Sudden withdrawal of nicotine may cause these side effects making it difficult to quit at once for teenagers.
• They can quit the company of friends who are smokers in order to quit smoking.