How will smoking kill you?

For roughly half of adult smokers it isn't a question of if smoking will kill them but how. Ask any smoker what smoking’s greatest killer is and they’ll likely tell you it’s lung cancer. They’re wrong. The correct response would have been circulatory or cardiovascular disease.

A smoker’s incorrect response to this basic question is understandable. Early on most sensed smoking’s impact upon their lungs. Even as teens they knew it was depriving them of a degree of endurance, stamina and normal lung function.

They could hear the panting while trying to keep pace with other teens. Eventually the sounds of a morning cough or wheeze arrive. But smoking induced circulatory disease is a silent killer.

Smokers need to imagine damage to normal blood flow being substantially worse than any damage they sense happening within their lungs. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, lung cancer is responsible for 28% of smoking related deaths while 43% are attributable to cardiovascular disease - primarily heart disease and strokes.

It's easy to appreciate that the 43 cancer causing chemicals in each and every puff are slowly building an internal time bomb. What few comprehend is that before the bomb has time to go off that it’s far more likely that smoking will cause some portion of their body’s blood piping to completely clog, with downstream oxygen deprived tissues suffocating and dying.