The effects of ‘occasional’ cigarette smoking on your health

It's no secret that smoking is bad for your health. Smoking affects nearly every system in your body, from the respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive and immune systems to the eyes, skin and bones.

If you smoke occasionally, you may not identify as a smoker or believe it’s as bad as smoking regularly, but even an occasional cigarette puts you at risk for serious health problems, including cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, heart disease and stroke.

Being an occasional smoker also increases your chances of becoming addicted to nicotine and potentially progressing to daily smoking.

How is a “smoker” defined?

The definition of a smoker varies, but generally someone is considered a smoker when they have smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and currently smoke some days or every day.

Smoking encompasses a variety of ways for inhaling fumes, including smoking traditional cigarettes, cigars or pipes; inhaling hookah or marijuana; or vaping.

Different types of inhalants can have different short- and long-term health effects. Nicotine poses certain risks, for example, and using e-cigarettes/vaping can lead to or aggravate certain lung diseases, where tobacco can present completely different health implications.

Are there risks if you used to smoke but no longer do?

While your risk of developing certain diseases may be elevated compared to nonsmokers, quitting smoking is the right choice no matter how long ago you started or how old you are.

There are immediate benefits to quitting that happen within the first day, including:

• After 20 minutes, your heart rate and blood pressure drop.
• After 12 hours, the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

Your risks of stroke and heart disease also decrease over time. If you haven’t smoked in 10 to 15 years, these health risks might even be similar to never having smoked. Your risk for lung cancer decreases, too, but it takes much longer.

Is there a threshold when smoking really affects your health?

There is no safe amount of smoking. People who smoke less than one cigarette a day have more than a 60% risk of early death compared to nonsmokers. Smoking one to 10 cigarettes a day increases that to almost 90%, compared to people who never smoked.

Definitive studies have also shown that even one to five cigarettes per day increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Tobacco smoke contains thousands of harmful chemicals, including more than 70 that are known to cause cancer. When you inhale, these chemicals can reach your brain and other organs within seconds after your first puff.

Nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco, can also make it difficult to quit even if you smoke occasionally.

Does it matter whether it’s cigarettes, vaping, marijuana or shisha?

Smoking cigarettes, cigars, shisha (i.e., waterpipe/hookah tobacco), and/or using traditional smokeless tobacco all are associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease and pulmonary disease. Some may think hookah smoking is less harmful than cigarette smoking, but it’s just as toxic.

Smoking marijuana exposes users to many of the same carcinogens and cardiovascular toxicants as cigarette smoking, such as carbon monoxide.

When vaping nicotine e-cigarettes, you’re not inhaling smoke, because there’s no burning. While it still exposes users to select carcinogens, vaping is believed to be much less harmful than cigarettes.