If you or someone you love smokes, lung cancer us not your only health concern.
Regular tobacco and electronic cigarette smokers increase their risk of heart and vascular diseases, including stroke, and lung diseases including emphysema — plus a variety of cancers.
“Smoking has an effect on all the organ systems in the body,” explains Leslie Kohman, MD, professor of surgery and director of outreach for the Upstate Cancer Center. “Smoke that’s inhaled through the lungs is delivered to the bloodstream.”
Even people who use smokeless tobacco expose their bodies to nicotine and at least 30 additional chemicals that are known to cause cancers, including these 12:
* Mouth and throat
* Voice box, or larynx
* Esophagus
* Lung, bronchus (bronchial tube) and trachea
* Stomach
* Kidney
* Pancreas
* Liver
* Urinary bladder
* Uterine cervix
* Colon and rectum
* Acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that starts in bone marrow
For help quitting smoking:
Call the New York State Smokers Quitline at 866-697-8487 for cessation counseling and nicotine replacement.
Consider free smoking cessation classes from Upstate’s Quit and Stay Quit Cessation Program at 315-464-8668.
This article appears in the summer 2017 issue of Cancer Care magazine.
