Take it From a Guy Who Looks at Diseased Lungs Every Day — Stop Smoking

You want a persuasive reason to stop smoking? Listen to someone who spends every day looking at the inside of people’s lungs that have been destroyed by tobacco.

Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. The tobacco in cigarettes is a carcinogen that causes mutations in lung cells and enables the growth of cancer. In fact, about 80% of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking, according to the American Cancer Society. And several thousand other lung cancer deaths are caused by exposure to secondhand smoke. The good news is that if you quit smoking, your risk for lung cancer decreases.

“If you’re smoking, don’t smoke,” says Dr. Joseph Friedberg, Head of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “You never return down all the way to the [level of] the person who never smoked as far as your risk of lung cancer goes, but it goes down with time.”

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