The effects of smoking can be found throughout a smoker's body, and also throughout their life. From coughs to wrinkles, to impotence and eventually death, the effects of smoking highlight just how insanely self-destructive the habit is. To quit smoking, click on the banner above.
Effects of Smoking on the mind
The effects of smoking nicotine are initially rewarding - at least they feel that way because nicotine mimicks chemicals in the reward pathways of the brain. However, because the reward feeling is pretend, the brain begins to get seriously knocked off balance. The whole point of emotions, rewards and stress levels are to remind the brain when you are doing something useful, constructive, dangerous, pointless etc. If you get a false reward - you are telling the brain that the action that led to that feeling is good, and worth doing again. So the effects of smoking are that smokers teach themselves to get stressed more often, to feel insecure, unaccepted, and useless!
The effects of smoking are similarly destructive on the self-image. Smokers quickly learn to see themselves as smokers, with all the negative associations becoming a part of their identity. This is one of the reasons that quitting is difficult.
Smokers often lose a sense of self-efficiacy as an effect of smoking. They know that they are addicted, that they are destroying their bodies, that they feel they need to smoke, that they can't do anything about it. This loss of self-control is a depressing effect of smoking - which undermines the smokers inner strengths.
Chemical effects of smoking
The neuro-chemcial effects of smoking are the opposite to what most people believe. Many smokers will claim that it relaxes them - but the opposite is true. They only think it relaxes them because they associate the physical sensation of smoking to comfort, familiarity, and sitting or standing still for a moment. Nicotine is actually a stimulant, it speeds up the heart rate and increases blood pressure.
Sleep can also be effected by smoking, with many smokers finding disturbed sleep patterns and low energy levels the next day. More on sleep and smoking can be found here
