THE LONG-LOST LUNGS

OK, weird topic…I get it.

But my heart goes out to smokers, especially those who smoke so much and know only next to nothing about what harm they are doing to their body systems.

So, I would love to educate in a few sentences.

First, the airways are lined by mucus.

Secondly, there’s this other lining, known as epithelium on all body tissues, and its of several types. Now, repeated smoking episodes cause the epithelial lining of the lungs (ciliated columnar epithelium) is transformed to a stronger type of epithelium (squamous epithelium).

If you think stronger always means better, you are fatally wrong in this case, because here, stronger means less protective but more adaptive to smoke. In actual fact, the tissue metaplasia (i.e. change from one cell type to another) seen here is a double-edged sword, because though it causes the respiratory system to have better survival chances in smokers, it still predisposes that person to the development of lung cancer. And many of us know that cancer spreads like wild-fire.

Those are just a few disadvantages of smoking.

A little advice: Don’t smoke for fun if you do not want your lungs to be lost to you…a word, they say is enough for the wise.

But sometimes, even the wisest of us need more than a word…don’t we?

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