Dangers In Smoking To The Digestive System

You have probably heard all about the dangers in smoking tobacco to your heart, your lungs and a developing fetus. But there are far more dangers in smoking than can be listed on a few packs of cigarettes, especially to your digestive system. Your digestive system is what extracts nutrients and energy in order to power the rest of the body. If something happens to the digestive system, then that affects everything else in the body.

Taste Bud Damage

One of the dangers in smoking traditional cigarettes is that it deadens your taste buds. This might not seem like one of the biggest dangers in smoking, but it is. Food that is tasteless won’t hold much of an appeal. This can help kill the appetite. However, this doesn’t mean a smoker will be skinny. Because the taste buds are so dulled, the only food that can have a good taste are those loaded in sugar, salt and fat.

This is one of the most unpublicized dangers in smoking tobacco – that you will be more prone to making bad food decisions and will become overweight. In becoming overweight, you put yourself at risk of getting many potentially lethal conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

Stomach Damage

Tobacco smoke irritates the lining of your stomach, causing more acid to form. This translates into yet more dangers in smoking – constant heartburn leading to a peptic ulcer. Chronic heartburn soon becomes gastroesophogeal reflux (GERD), where the stomach acid creeps back up the esophagus. This can damage the esophagus so badly that it can get cancer.

But meanwhile, back in the stomach, a peptic ulcer is forming. Although ulcers are treatable, unless you stop smoking tobacco, the ulcer will recur. That's because of another of the dangers in smoking – the body takes longer to heal itself.