How Smoking Affects Your Body
Dr. Travis Stork: What does smoke can do to your body, take a look. Every time you inhale a cigarette do think that, “Hey, I'm breathing in carcinogens. I'm breathing in toxins.” But the nicotine in those cigarettes, what it does is it causes your heart rate to increase. It causes increase in respiration. It increases your blood pressure. What the nicotine does in your brain it -- you see those nerve cells. It increases the release of dopamine. That’s a pleasure center in your brain.
That’s why when those cells get flooded with dopamine after taking that drug in the cigarette you have that feel good relaxation but the problem is when you don’t have anymore you become nervous. You become irritable and a smoker figures out exactly how much nicotine they need to keep those pleasure centers filled and that’s why you end up smoking a pack and half a day.
Dr. Lisa Masterson: Right because it’s a withdrawal, because it’s an addiction.
Dr. Travis Stork: And I want everyone to see what a healthy lung looks like versus a diseased lung because again you can talk abstractly all you want about smoking and it doesn’t really do a whole lot, right until you start talking about the nitty-gritty, until you start talking about what I see in the ER. This is a healthy set of lungs, nice color, nice size. This is someone who smoked their whole life, just compare their colors.
But what’s happening inside this lung and this is a cross section. This is what we call early emphysema. It’s pretty obvious to the naked eye that this is diseased compared to this, right. When this patient comes to the ER, I'm going to show you how they’re breathing, needing oxygen and I'm telling you right now you smoke your whole life. I can tell the minute someone walks into the ER if they spent their lives smoking.
And what people don’t tell you when you start smoking in your teens, in your 20’s is they don’t tell you what it’s going to be like when you reach 40 or 50 or 60 and every breath you take is a struggle.
Dr. Lisa Masterson: Because those lungs are less flexible, less pliable that’s why they can’t --
Dr. Travis Stork: And they can’t exchange oxygen as well. The beautiful thing we’re going to talk about just coming up is if this is the way you're born and you're starting to move in this direction from spending your life with smoking you can go back to this. And these come from bodies, the exhibition.
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