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The facts about smoking: health risks, how many die, e-cigarettes, and what it takes to quit
- Smoking deaths, the heart attack risks from vaping, how cigarettes affect your sex drive – it’s all here
- Any smokers scared into quitting could well have a long road ahead of them
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More than 7 million people worldwide die from smoking-related deaths every year, according to the World Health Organisation, or roughly one every five seconds.
Lung cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer: it is responsible for over 90 per cent of cases in men and over 80 per cent in women.
Smoking can also wreak havoc from our heads – accelerating hair loss, balding and greying, says the American Academy of Dermatology – to our fingers and toes, where it can encourage fungal nail infections, the News Medical portal reports.
The use of e-cigarettes increases the risk of heart attacks by 34 per cent, coronary heart disease by 25 per cent and depression by 55 per cent, according to recent research by the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita in the United States.
Researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK found that patients with the most dangerous form of skin cancer –melanoma – with a history of smoking are 40 per cent less likely to survive their disease than those who have not smoked in the decade after their diagnosis.
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