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Our Affiliates - GNC
How Smoking Damages Your Cells
... and what vitamins to take
when you quit smoking
Although all of the harmful reactions caused by smoking are not
completely understood, researchers agree that most degenerative
diseases caused by smoking are the result of free radicals. Free
radicals are associated with increased cell mutations and can lead
to such diseases as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Free radicals are unstable molecules that are missing electrons.
They pillage your body's healthy molecules from electrons and leave
damaged cells and tissues in their wake. This process is called
oxidation and it is the chain reaction that is set off by the
millions of free-radicals that you allow to enter your body when you
inhale a cigarette. Oxidation is the same process that makes iron
rust and fruit turn brown. Many scientists now believe that
oxidation is what makes people age.
Free radicals are formed during everyday functions such as
breathing. However, environmental stress factors such as smoking
dramatically accelerate their production. In fact, each puff on a
cigarette generates 100 trillion free radicals, making smokers much
more susceptible than nonsmokers to the ravages of oxidative tissue
damage – and cancer.
To fight this free radical onslaught, you need a strong defense. And
according to research, one of the best defenses consists of
nutrients known as antioxidants, most notably vitamins C and E and A
(beta-carotene). Antioxidants act as your body's kamikaze fighters,
protecting your body's healthy molecules by sacrificing their own
electrons to neutralize hostile free radical invaders.
Anti-Oxidants
Anti-oxidants such as vitamin E and vitamin C are the first lines of
defense against the free radicals generated by cigarette smoke.
Studies have shown that vitamin E disappears more quickly in smokers
than in non-smokers - findings that may help explain how smoking can
cause cancer. Interestingly, lung tissue is one of the most
vulnerable to attack by toxins and free radicals.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant found in sunflower seeds and
sweet potatoes. One of vitamin E's most important functions for
smokers is slowing the progression of atherosclerosis (hardening of
the arteries). Studies show that before plaque can build in your
arteries, LDL cholesterol, the "bad" kind, has to undergo
oxidation-related changes that allow it to deposit on artery walls.
Vitamin E helps prevent those changes.
According to studies conducted at the Harvard School of Public
Health, both smokers and nonsmokers taking vitamin E supplements
reduced their risk of heart disease by 30 to 40 percent.
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is essential for the formation
of bone and connective tissue (which binds other tissues and organs
together). Vitamin C helps the body absorb iron, and it helps burns
and wounds heal. Like vitamin E, vitamin C is an antioxidant: It
protects cells against damage by free radicals, which are reactive
by-products of normal cell activity. Smoking increases the vitamin C
requirement by 30 to 50%. Many studies have correlated high vitamin
C intakes with low rates of cancer, particularly cancers of the
mouth, larynx and esophagus. Vitamin C also helps your body rid
itself of nicotine more quickly.
MEDICAL ALERT: Some people may experience diarrhea when taking
vitamin C in doses that exceed 1,200 milligrams daily.
If you are taking anticoagulant drugs, you should not take vitamin E
supplements.
Vitamin A comes from animal sources, such as eggs, meat,
milk, cheese, and fish oil. Vitamin A helps form and maintain
healthy teeth, skeletal and soft tissue, mucous membranes, and skin.
It is also known as retinol because it produces the pigments in the
retina of the eye.
Carotenoids are dark colored dyes found in plant foods that can turn
into a form of vitamin A. One such carotenoid is beta-carotene,
which is also an antioxidant.
In a recent study, rats were exposed to cigarette smoke and found
that those rats became vitamin A deficient. Benzopyrene, a common
carcinogen found in cigarettes, was found to induce vitamin A
deficiency. Furthermore, when the lung content of the rats was found
to be deficient of vitamin A, the occurrence of emphysema was high.
Consequently, the thought is that smokers develop emphysema because
of a vitamin A deficiency.
Vitamin D: You know that smoking is bad for you. But did
you know that almost half of all smokers eventually die from cancer?
Here’s the good news! In June, 2007, a four-year clinical trial
involving 1,200 women was published that found those taking Vitamin
D supplements had about a 60% reduction in cancer incidence,
compared with those who didn't take it, a drop twice the impact on
cancer attributed to smoking.
The main way people achieve healthy levels of vitamin D is not
through diet but through sun exposure. People make vitamin D
whenever their skin is directly exposed to bright sunshine. By an
unfortunate coincidence, the strong sunshine able to produce vitamin
D is the same ultraviolet B light that can also causes sunburns.
Luckily, only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine —
of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the
vitamin.
If you are like most Americans these days, you spend about 93% of
your time away from direct sunlight. This fact combined with proven
cancer-fighting benefits, make Vitamin D a wise supplement choice.
To purchase the recommended
vitamins above,
visit Achieve Laser's GNC store today!
www.achievelaser.com/gnc
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