Smoking Mutates your DNA Every Year


Smoking Mutates your DNA Every Year

The reasons to give up smoking never seem to stop piling up. From tooth decay and gum disease to lung cancer and heart disease, we’re sure you’ve heard it all. However, if you needed just one more reason to quit… this might be it. For those who smoke a pack a day, every year smoking affects you by causing 150 mutations in each lung cell. And it doesn’t end there.

According to a recent study from the publication Science, smoking a pack a day also causes 79 mutations in the larynx, 18 in the bladder, 23 in your mouth and 6 in your liver. What does it mean to have your cells mutate? Each mutation increases the risk of those cells turning cancerous.

Six million people die each year due to cigarette related cancers. Each cigarette contains a minimum of 60 carcinogens (cancer causing substances). Tobacco is also implicated in at least 17 types of cancer.

Everything we put in our bodies becomes intertwined in our DNA, from food and water to harmful drugs like alcohol and tobacco. While eating healthy can also change the structure of your DNA for the good, smoking’s effects on your DNA are entirely negative. So if you needed one more reason to quit, here it is.

Have you recently given up smoking? Or maybe this article has finally prompted you to? Are you now ready to get your dental health back on track? Contact Prescott Dentistry today and experience minimally invasive, biomimetic dentistry from the experienced doctor Dr. Nathan Thompson.

Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (12/13/2016) chris vaughan (Flickr)