Smoke in Your Eyes: How Cigarettes Affect Intimate Health

Despite half a century of public anti-smoking efforts, tobacco remains the primary cause of preventable disease and death globally. Today, female smokers have caught up with their male counterparts as they face the same health consequences and some risks that tobacco has in store only for women.

Usually, smoking habit starts in youth. In spite of a new trend that is becoming popular among teenagers – I’m talking about vaporizer pens – they are still willing to try tobacco.

We know that smoking is an unhealthy habit, that cigarettes cost a lot, and children should live in a safe, smoke-free environment—but do you know the effect smoking can have on your reproductive and general health?

How Smoking Affects Your Health

Picking up even one cigarette puts a woman at an increased risk for the following health problems:

Reproductive Issues

Women who smoke:

• experience more severe premenstrual symptoms, and have an unstable menstrual cycle or more painful periods.
• have lower levels of estrogen, which can cause fatigue, mood changes, and vaginal dryness.
• go through earlier menopause and have worse symptoms.
• damage their fertility. Smoking affects nearly every phase of conception. It increases the risks of not ovulating. The fertilized egg’s ability to reach the uterus becomes lower, and sometimes it leads to an ectopic or tubal pregnancy, both of these are life-threatening conditions. So, it’s a good idea to quit before you consider pregnancy.
• harm to unborn babies. Smoking during pregnancy poisons the environment inside the uterus, where the fetus grows. This doubles the chances of preterm labor and the risk of delivering a low birth weight baby.

Respiratory Issues

Women who smoke:

• are more likely than men to develop the severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at younger ages. It’s a lung disease that gets worse over time and makes it hard to breathe. There is no cure for COPD.
• are at high risk of developing a range of potentially lethal lung diseases, including chronic bronchitis, obstructive bronchiolitis, and emphysema.

Cardiovascular (Heart) Issues

Even one cigarette a day makes you closer to cardiovascular diseases. Women who smoke:

• increase a risk factor for heart disease. If an individual keeps smoking, heart problems become much worse and develop much faster. And they have a much higher chance of dying from your heart disease.
• and use oral contraceptives increase their likelihood of heart disease, even more, especially individuals over the age of 35.

Smoking women are more vulnerable to some tobacco effects than smoking men:

• Female smokers have six times higher risk of a heart attack, and males – three times higher, than people who never smoked.
• Women smokers, especially those over 35 years, are under higher risk of dying from heart disease than men smokers.
• Females are also more likely to die from an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which is a weakening of the aorta, which is the main blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body.

[https://www.verywellhealth.com/smoking-and-your-heart-1746369]

Cancer

People who smoke are under a more significant threat of developing some type of cancer, such as lung, pancreatic, throat, kidney, liver, bladder, and colorectal cancers. Some of the types are specifically for women:

• Cervical
• Uterine
• Vulvar
• Vaginal
• Breast cancer.

Is Vaping a Better Option for a Health Conscious Woman?

Today, many smokers switch from a cigarette to a vape pen as it is advertised as a safer option. Most vape e-juices do contain a number of potentially toxic chemical substances, such as propylene glycol or glycerol which are the basic ingredients. Some scientists say that at high-temperatures, these substances can transform into something called propylene oxide, which is assumed to cause cancer. However, there’s no research-based evidence of that.

The nicotine is another factor to consider. It is addictive and is supposed to be detrimental for overall health. While some vape manufacturers produce non-nicotine e-liquids, the majority of vapers choose e-juices with various amounts of nicotine in them.

The major advantage of vaping over smoking is the absence of combustion. When tobacco is burned, it produces harmful chemicals, including carcinogens. If people use vape pen mods to smoke herb, they don’t burn it. Vape devices heat the material and produce vapor which is almost free of harmful chemicals.   

Basically, the safety of vaping depends on a user. If you avoid nicotine and use your vaporizer pen appropriately, you have practically nothing to worry about.

Will vaping help you quit regular cigarettes? Well, it works for some people, so that it may work for you.

Knowing more about the health issues of tobacco consumption is a good motivation for some people to quit. Do additional research. If you can’t stop by yourself, there are many facilities to help you – including your GP’s office. Try every method until you find the one that works for you!

Please note that advice offered by Intimina may not be relevant to your individual case. For specific concerns regarding your health, always consult your physician or other licensed medical practitioners.