Smoking Cigarettes Permanently Damages Your DNA, Study Finds

Every day scientific research unearths more mysteries while revealing greater levels of understanding about the impact that good and especially bad practices wreak upon our bodies. One of the most harmful effects that ravage people's bodies is smoking cigarettes that involve foolishly inhaling toxic smoke into lungs (which even seems silly to many of the 1 billion smokers worldwide). But when tobacco smoke contains 4,000 chemicals - 250 of which are known as harmful, 50 of them are linked to causing cancer - and is responsible for nearly 600,000 deaths a year, then the folly is exposed. The implications of smoking, however, are seemingly ingrained into smokers more than tobacco stains on teeth and their surroundings, it impacts their DNA. An extensive study of 16,000 smokers that spanned several decades found that smoking visibly scars DNA. The scarring is courtesy of a process known as methylation, which alters DNA and changes gene function, often leading to cancer as a result.

“Our study has found compelling evidence that smoking has a long-lasting impact on our molecular machinery, an effect that can last more than 30 years,” said Roby Joehanes of Hebrew Senior Life and Harvard Medical School. Methylation is responsible for mutations that lead to cancer and heart disease, yet the findings aren’t all a harbinger of doom. One thing the body triumphs at is healing, and the study also found that after five years of stopping smoking, DNA could heal back to almost non-smoking levels. Proving that it’s never too late to better your life and health.

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