Tobacco use can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body. Smoking of tobacco causes almost nine of every 10 cases of lung cancer, it can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body, including in the—
- Bladder.
- Blood (acute myeloid leukemia).
- Cervix.
- Colon and rectum.
- Esophagus.
- Kidney and renal pelvis.
- Liver.
- Lungs, bronchi, and trachea.
- Mouth and throat.
- Pancreas.
- Stomach.
- Voice box (larynx).
The most important things you can do to avoid health risks from cancer are—
- If you don’t use tobacco—don’t start!
- If you do use tobacco—quit!
Regardless of how long you have smoked, stopping can lower your risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. At least 70 chemicals can cause cancer in smoke from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. When you breathe in that smoke, the chemicals enter your bloodstream, where they go to all regions of your body.
Many of these chemicals can harm your DNA, which controls how your body creates new cells and guides each type of cell to accomplish its job. Damaged DNA can cause cells to grow in ways that are not expected. These atypical cells have the potential to develop into cancer. People who smoke are not the only people who can get cancer from tobacco smoke. People around them—their kids, partners, friends, coworkers, and others—breathe in that smoke, too. Smokeless tobacco products such as dipping and chewing tobacco, can cause cancer, too, including cancers of the esophagus, mouth and throat, and pancreas.
Smoking harms nearly every bodily organ and organ system in the body and diminishes a person’s overall health. Smoking causes cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx, mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, liver, pancreas, stomach, cervix, colon, and rectum, as well as acute myeloid leukemia. Quitting smoking reduces the risk of cancer and many other diseases, such as heart disease and COPD, caused by smoking.
The risk of premature death and the chances of developing and dying from a smoking-related cancer depend on many factors, including the number of years a person has smoked, the number of cigarettes smoked per day, and the age at which the person began smoking. Quitting smoking improves the prognosis of cancer patients. For patients with some cancers, quitting smoking at the time of diagnosis may reduce the risk of dying by 30% to 40%.
For those having surgery, chemotherapy, or other treatments, quitting smoking helps improve the body’s ability to heal and respond to therapy. In addition, quitting smoking may lower the risk that the cancer will recur, that a second cancer will develop, or that the person will die from the cancer or other causes
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