The Best Prevention Against The Ill Effects Of Smoking: Not Starting At All

Has it ever crossed your mind that smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the US? Statistics show the average life span of male smokers is less than 62, the minimum retirement age when people become eligible to benefit from their social security. Mortality among smokers of a minimum two packs of cigarettes per day is 12 to 25 times greater than among non smokers. It's a fact that 30% of all cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancers are caused by smoking. This bad habit also causes lots of other cancer types such as esophagus, mouth, throat, bladder, kidney, female genitals, pancreas and bladder. These are only a few of the terrible health consequences of smoking. Nonetheless, an impressive percentage of the population continues smoking, either from ignorance or from inertia.

Denver urologist Lawrence Karsh, M.D., says smoking is one of the worst possible habits a young male can develop. Smoking is not only tightly connected to lung cancer and heart disease, but it may also damage the blood vessels inside the penis, making erection a problematic issue. Unfortunately, by the time such effects become obvious, it's already too late to repair the damage.

There's also a new study to support this finding. It confirmed long-term smoking increases the risk of male sexual impotence, defined as the impossibility to achieve and maintain a normal erection long enough for a satisfactory copulation. This study was conducted in China on almost 5,000 male subjects, aged 35-74, sexually active and free from circulatory disease. Researchers were able to prove there was a connection between the number of smoked cigarettes and the probability of developing sexual impotence.

Researchers from Tulane University School of Public Health in New Orleans collected data from previous research and found that the link between smoking and sexual impotence has been clearly evidenced by those studies. Nonetheless, most of these studies were done on subjects suffering from hypertension, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The conclusion of the research was that there was a 41% greater risk of developing sexual impotence in male smokers versus non smokers. There was also a connection between the number of cigarettes and the risk; heavy smokers having a much greater risk of sexual impotence than occasional ones. Those who smoked up to 10 cigarettes per day had 27% increased risk, those who smoked 11-20 cigarettes per day had a 45% increase of the risk, while smokers of more than 20 cigarettes per day had a 65% increase of the sexual impotence risk compared to non smokers.

Another worrisome fact revealed by the research was that this risk of sexual impotence didn't decrease once the subjects quit smoking. Former cigarette smokers had the same risk as their smoker fellows. This is something that should trigger an alarm among younger population, as such irreversible effects may destroy lives. This makes it clear that the best prevention of smoking associated diseases and health troubles is not starting at all. Public authorities should convey such messages and make the youth aware of the permanent and irreversible health damage they expose themselves to by starting smoking. Impotence is a topic that might resonate well in teens, so it should be clearly communicated to them how this risk increases once they become smokers.