Smoking alters your DNA

Smokers have just had a new worry added to their fears. Smoking alters your DNA. A recently published study demonstrates that cigarette smoking not only damages your health while you are smoking, it also causes mutations in the tissues which last forever.

Smoking alters your DNA

Smokers create permanent changes to the DNA of cells in their lungs, throat, mouth and liver. Although the smoker's health improves when they stop smoking, the damage to the cells is permanent. There is a direct link between the number of cigarettes smoked and the number of mutations found.

This means that even long after you stop smoking the potential for cancer is still lurking deep inside the cells of your body. It really is true that every time you light up it's like pushing the button on a slot machine. Every turn of the wheels makes it more likely that you'll hit a jackpot you don't want.

The problem of course is that the more mutations there are, the more likely it is that one of them will turn into cancer. The more you smoke the more mutations you have, so the more chance you have of developing a life-threatening cancer.

Smoking affects distant organs too

Smoking doesn't just affect the tissues that come into contact directly with the smoke inhaled. Traces of smoking linked mutations are found in organs such as the bladder. Exactly how this link is established is not known but there is a clear link.

Smokers are well aware that they are damaging their health. Perhaps now that they know they're not merely damaging their health right now, they are actually altering the DNA inside the cells of their body, they will be more motivated to stop smoking.

It is quite horrifying that scientists are now able to examine your DNA, and like an archaeologist, trace your bad behavior from long ago.

Source: Science 04 Nov 2016:
Vol. 354, Issue 6312, pp. 618-622
DOI: 10.1126/science.aag0299