It’s not uncommon for people to only smoke when they’re drinking alcohol and hanging out with their friends. In these instances, individuals often don’t class themselves as smokers; however, the first drag of a cigarette you take incites changes in your body. For instance, your blood pressure and pulse rate shoot up, which forces your body to work harder. The same still applies even if you’re only an occasional smoker, so it’s worth bearing a few things in mind when you light up a social cigarette. After all, when you confront smoking for what it is, it can be frightening.

The Smallest Amount of Tobacco is Addictive

Firstly, whether you have a cigarette every hour or every weekend, nicotine is highly addictive, meaning social smokers can turn into full time smokers very quickly. You might find yourself buying your own cigarettes,trying out new vape flavors alone, or waking up in the morning to cigarette cravings. Therefore, if you don’t want to be a smoker, you should also shy away from social smoking. As the saying goes, it’s a slippery slope, and it’s not likely one that you want to go down.

Smoking Can Disrupt Your Sleeping Pattern

You may find that after a night out, you really struggle to get to sleep, and this may be down to the nicotine you’ve consumed. Nicotine causes your heart to race, making you feel more alert when you’re trying to sleep. Meanwhile, smoking also adds to the likelihood of sleep apnoea and snoring, making for a night of disturbances.

Smoking Can Worsen Existing Conditions

Smoking affects your nervous system, meaning that smoking can result in you becoming more sensitive to pain. After all, your nervous system refers to the network of nerves across your entire body, and smoking disrupts the messaging between your brain and nerves. As a result, you may notice that bumps may hurt a little more than usual. On top of this, smoking cigarettes can result in back pains and headaches. Ultimately, smoking leads to discomfort and pain in both the short- and long-term.

Smoking Prematurely Ages Your Skin

If the health threats of smoking don’t convince you to put out your cigarette, perhaps the way it impacts your appearance will. Since smoking inhibits your skin from obtaining oxygen, this can accelerate the aging process of the skin, as it causes skin to lose its elasticity. Similarly, smoking makes you three times as likely to get wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. While the effects on your appearance aren’t the most serious of the impact that smoking has, sometimes vanity is the driving factor behind people quitting.

Smoking Can Contribute to Anxiety and Stress

Smoking leads to nicotine traveling to your brain within 10 seconds, resulting in a rush of adrenaline that triggers your body’s fight or flight response. Consequently, your blood pressure and heart rate increases while the blood flow to your heart slows down. From this, you might experience a racing heartbeat and rapid, shallow breathing. Each of these feelings can contribute to feelings of anxiety and stress, so smoking may not necessarily be as relaxing as you think. If you’re smoking to manage your stress, you’d be better off choosing a different method of winding down.

Smoking Shortens Your Life

Cigarettes contain a poisonous gas called carbon monoxide, and with every drag, the amount of carbon monoxide in your bloodstream increases. Carbon monoxide is detrimental to every one of your body’s organs, meaning it can contribute to an early demise. In fact, it’s believed that every cigarette you smoke shortens your life by 11 minutes, so those few cigarettes each weekend can soon add up.