”A cigarette after a meal is better than a living god”, this is a vivid description of the pleasure of “swallowing clouds and exhaling fog” by smokers. Smoking is known to be harmful to health, but the number of smokers around the world continues to grow. Smokers often believe that smoking can “relieve fatigue”. In fact, there are no substances in smoke that eliminate fatigue. It is only because the inhalation of a small amount of nicotine to excite the central nervous system, will give people the feeling of “relief”, inhaled more nicotine, the central nervous system into a state of inhibition, so that people are sluggish to the feeling of fatigue. Smokers suffer from cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease mortality rate is about 90% higher than non-smokers, smoking is equal to chronic suicide! According to the 2007 China Smoking Control Report released by the Ministry of Health, approximately 460 million people in China are regular victims of secondhand smoke each year, and more than 100,000 people die each year from secondhand smoke. According to other statistics, nearly one million Chinese people die each year directly from smoking-related respiratory and cardiopulmonary diseases. When it comes to smoking, our first reaction is that it has the greatest impact on the human lungs, but we do not know that cigarettes are also directly related to cardiovascular disease, and smoking is a serious threat to cardiovascular health. In people who smoke a lot for a long time, the balance of excitation and inhibition processes of the cerebral cortex activity is disrupted, and dysregulation of the vegetative nerves occurs. As a result, the person suffers from distracted attention, poor thinking, easy fatigue, insomnia, memory loss, heartbeat, hand tremors and other symptoms of neurasthenia. Smoking is also harmful to the vasomotor center and the nerve endings of the cerebral blood vessels, which can constrict the cerebral blood vessels and reduce the blood supply to the brain, thus producing symptoms of headache and dizziness, which is also a cause of memory loss. Smoking can have adverse effects on the heart and brain vessels through several pathways. Nicotine can stimulate the heart and make the heart rate faster, which causes blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise. At the same time, tobacco can also make the heart beat faster and blood vessels constrict through sympathetic nerves. Therefore, smoking increases the burden on the heart and increases the heart’s need for oxygen, causing hypoxia in the arterial walls and myocardium, and long-term vasoconstriction can lead to the formation of systemic atherosclerosis. More seriously, smoking can cause spasm of the heart and brain arteries, but also make the blood to promote atherosclerosis of substances such as cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein concentration increases, and these substances deposited in the coronary artery wall, blood vessel wall, prompting the occurrence of coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease. Studies have shown that in people who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day, the incidence of coronary heart disease is 3.5 times that of nonsmoking, and the mortality rate of coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease is 6 times that of nonsmoking. Smoking also causes coronary artery spasm, which slows blood flow in the coronary arteries, reduces the viscosity of blood, and increases myocardial hypoxia. Therefore, smoking can cause angina pectoris in patients with coronary artery disease and promote myocardial infarction in severe cases. Nicotine can also stimulate the conduction system of the heart to induce tachycardia and arrhythmia. If the arrhythmia is induced in patients with coronary artery disease, it can increase the risk of sudden death due to cardiac arrest. Smoke contains 1-5% carbon monoxide, which is the gas that causes gas poisoning. The hemoglobin in the blood of normal people combines with oxygen and reaches all the organs and tissues of the body with the blood flow, and then releases oxygen for the body’s needs. The affinity between carbon monoxide and hemoglobin is more than 200 times greater than that of oxygen, so it competes with oxygen for hemoglobin, thus affecting the supply of oxygen. The carbon monoxide hemoglobin in the blood of normal people is only 0.5 to 0.7%, while the carbon monoxide hemoglobin in the blood of smokers is as much as 10 to 20%. Carbon monoxide hemoglobin can cause edema in the arterial lining, forming blisters and narrowing the arterial lumen, impeding blood flow and providing conditions for cholesterol deposition. Carbon monoxide can also promote atherosclerosis, which is an important factor in inducing cardiovascular hypoxia. At the same time, smoking promotes the development of systemic atherosclerosis and hypertension, thus increasing mortality from stroke and aortic lesions, and also causing thrombo-occlusive vascular disease. To find evidence of the relationship between smoking and cardiovascular disease and death, a team of British physicians began a 40-year study in 1948 to compare the change in mortality between nonsmoking and smoking physicians. First look at the first result: the effect on myocardial infarction, the horizontal axis is the number of cigarettes smoked and the vertical axis is the incidence of myocardial infarction. As can be seen, the risk factors are multiplied even with 1 to 5 cigarettes per day; doctors who smoke 1 to 2 packs of cigarettes are 5 to 8 times more likely to suffer a myocardial infarction than those who do not smoke. If smoking is banned in public places, the incidence of myocardial infarction will be reduced by 40% in just one year. In addition, 80% of zero-smoking physicians live past age 70 and one-third live past age 85; half of smoking physicians lose their lives before age 70 and more than 90% die at age 85, an average time difference of 10 years. The average smoking physician lives 10 years less than the average non-smoking physician. According to data, the incidence of lung cancer decreases by 70% after stopping smoking for more than 15 years, and the mortality rate of patients with coronary heart disease is about the same as that of nonsmokers after quitting for 10 to 20 years. After quitting smoking, the cure rate of ulcer disease is improved and the symptoms of neurological disorders are improved or disappear. Smoking is not only harmful to the smoker’s own body, but also directly endangers the health of those around him. I hope that by reading this short article, we can raise the awareness of a smoke-free environment and make our surroundings less a cigarette and more a point of health!