Is smoking really addictive? I will tell you about how smoking really addictive
Today in speech class we have to find topic to talk about so I am going to talk about
how is smoking really addictive? so I hope you learn something new about smoking.When your parents were young, people could buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere — even in hospitals! Ads for cigarettes were all over the place. Today we're more aware about how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in almost all public places and cigarette companies are no longer allowed to advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines.
Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease; that it can shorten your life by 10 years or more; and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands of dollars a year. So how come people are still lighting up? The answer, in a word, is addiction. Is smoking really addictive? I will tell you about how smoking really addictive
Yes. The nicotine in cigarette smoke causes an addiction to smoking. Nicotine is an addictive drug just like heroin and cocaine:
When taken in small amounts, nicotine creates pleasant feelings that make the smoker want to smoke more. It acts on the chemistry of the brain and central nervous system, affecting the smoker's mood. Nicotine works very much like other addicting drugs, by flooding the brain's reward circuits with dopamine (a chemical messenger). Nicotine also gives you a little bit of an adrenaline rush -- not enough to notice, but enough to speed up your heart and raise your blood pressure.
Nicotine reaches the brain within seconds after taking a puff, but its effects start to wear off within a few minutes. This often leads the smoker to get another cigarette. If the smoker doesn't smoke again soon, withdrawal symptoms kick in and get worse over time.
The typical smoker takes about 10 puffs from each cigarette. A person smoking a pack per day gets about 200 "hits" of nicotine each day.
Smokers usually become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical and emotional (mental or psychological) withdrawal symptoms when they stop smoking. These symptoms include irritability, nervousness, headaches, and trouble sleeping. The true marker for addiction, though, is that people still smoke even though they know smoking is bad for them -- affecting their lives, their health, and their families in unhealthy ways. Most people who smoke want to quit.
Researchers are also looking to see if there are other chemicals in tobacco that help promote addiction. In the brains of animals, tobacco smoke causes chemical changes that are not fully explained by the effects of nicotine.
