Cigarettes are one of those things that has benefits for everyone, but have both more, and more common benefits for girls. This comes from a combination of physiological differences, and the simple fact that while some boys do smoke cigarettes- girls are expected to. As girls start to smoke it’ll become immediately clear to them how much better a girl looks while she’s smoking; and not too long after that she’ll figure out how easy it is to lose weight when she can use cigarettes to suppress her appetite, but there’s so much more for her to see. As a girl continues to smoke exciting changes are taking place inside her body which will lead to some amazing effects further down the road.
Most girls today start their smoking journey when they’re in seventh grade (when they’re around thirteen years old), and they usually smoke between five and fifteen cigarettes every day for the next few years. Typically by the time they’re sixteen they smoke at least twenty cigarettes per day with the average girl smoking about 25. Therefore we’ll preform all our calculations assuming 25 cigarettes smoked per day.
Cigarettes and Weight Loss
As every girl knows, the most critical piece of weight loss is to restrict the amount you eat- but that can get quite difficult when your body is constantly telling you it’s hungry. Luckily for all of us girls, nicotine is there to save the day. Most of the changes cigarettes bring about take anywhere between a few months and many years before we can really notice their effects, but there is one effect of cigarettes (or really nicotine) that we can feel right away and that’s appetite suppression.
Through a number of different neurologic pathways, nicotine prevents the brain from receiving hunger signals sent out by the body, produces it’s own full signals, and send’s the body signals to start burning fat. Usually when the body feels full it won’t burn fat, and when it burns fat it tells the brain it’s getting more hungry, but nicotine manages to solve both problems in one go!
Every smoker- girl or boy- gets this benefit, but it’s got some unique extras for girls. Firstly, and most obviously, weight loss is just far more important for girls than it is for boys.
Not only that though, but estrogen increases the rate at which nicotine is metabolized out of a girls system, which means girls need to smoke cigarettes more frequently than men do; and because each time you smoke a cigarette it adds to the appetite suppression effect, that means girls receive significantly more benefit for the same effort.
Inside the Body
While the only change which is immediately noticeable might be the appetite suppression, that’s far from the only change taking place. Deep inside a girl’s body, cigarette smoke works it’s magic, and starts the long process of transitioning her airways and lungs from those of a non-smoker to those of a smoker. Generally speaking there are two categories of change that take place inside a girl’s body as she begins smoking.
First are the functional changes. This includes things like elevated mucus production, deposition of tar, airway inflammation, and reduced cilia clearance. Functional changes typically start to take effect much faster, but also have less significant impacts than structural changes. Functional changes also typically require maintenance meaning if a girl were to stop smoking cigarettes, these changes would revert.
Structural changes on the other hand typically take much longer before their effects become noticeable, but the effects typically are more significant once developed, and rarely require maintenance.Changes like thickening and stiffening of the airway walls, and alveolar restructuring will take many years to develop, but once developed are permanent changes.
Tar Buildup
Tar: What even is it? Tar is a dark, sticky, resinous substance that accumulates in the lungs with every cigarette smoked. It has a texture similar to thick molasses and is quite sticky. Because of this texture, every time a girl smokes a cigarette, a few milligrams of tar are deposited into her lungs- yes- for real! The sticky liquid tar goes into your lungs every time you smoke a cigarette! Over time this tar will accumulate in her airways and lungs while her body tries to remove it.
With each inhale, about 26% of the tar is deposited in the large airways, 25% in the small airways, and a full 49% of the tar is deposited into the alveoli (the smallest sacks deep in the lungs). This is important because tar deposited in the large airways is typically cleared after a few days, with the small airways taking a few weeks. Some of the tar in the alveoli will clear after a few months to a year, but about 20% of the tar in the alveoli will take more than 20 years to clear meaning around 12% of the total deposited tar will stay in a girls body for 20 years or more.
Each cigarette a girl smokes typically deposits between 7.5mg and 9mg of tar, meaning a girl who smokes a moderate 25 cigarettes a day would have 187.5mg of tar deposited every day with approximately 22.5mg of that staying inside her body for 20+ years. That adds up to around 387.5mg of long-term tar every year, and that tar will continue to accumulate throughout her life.
Typically a girl will start to feel some of the tar buildup before the end of her first year, and by the end of her second year she’ll likely feel the smaller breaths she’s taking. While these changes are fun in and of themselves, they primarily serve as indicators that the tar is accumulating inside her lungs.
As time goes on her lungs will take on more and more tar, and because of it’s dark color this will literally change the color of her lungs over time! For a girl, knowing that her lungs are filling with dark sticky tar and that tar is slowly changing their color from their original pink to gray, and eventually to black is truly incredible. Here’s a comparison between what a girls lungs look like with and without tar so girls can better visualize the changes while smoking cigarettes:
This is another change made easier just by being a girl. The dark sticky tar is better retained by girls because their smaller airways allow the air to move faster allowing a higher percentage of the tar to reach deep into the lungs and deposit into the alveoli. As this tar builds up girls will start to notice their breaths becoming smaller and more elegant, which indicates that the tar is building up within the lungs. The more tar is in a girl’s lungs the darker they’ll become changing from bright pink all the way to dark gray or even black.
Airway Restriction
One of the first functional changes that a girl will likely notice is increased mucus load. Every time a girl draws cigarette smoke through her airways and into her lungs, the smoke will activate goblet cells which are responsible for mucus production. When these cells are activated they’ll produce additional mucus, leading to a higher overall mucus load.
In addition, that same smoke affects a girls cilia, which are the little fingers responsible for pushing mucus out of the airways. It causes them to slow down, shorten, and can even reduce the number of cilia in a girls airway. This means not only does cigarette smoke cause increased mucus production but also means girls will hold onto this mucus better. Because of this, mucus will start by building up in the large airways, before falling into the small airways, and eventually even pooling deep within the lungs.
Cigarette smoke also triggers an inflammatory response in the large airways causing the walls of these larger airways to swell, further reducing inner diameter. When combining the swelling of large airway walls with the buildup of mucus in the large airways, girls will start to take smaller, tighter breaths helping them to look thinner and come across as more elegant, and after a while some girls even develop a cute little wheeze which is so fun and girly.
These effects are all amplified in girls due in part to their naturally smaller airways. The large airways start out with a smaller average inner-diameter for girls than they have for men, meaning each millimeter that inner-diameter is reduced restricts a larger percentage of a girls overall airway diameter than it would restrict for a man. This means symptoms will develop faster in girls, and they can experience more significant symptoms than men.
Airway Restructuring
Not only does cigarette smoke cause the airways to swell up and accumulate mucus, it also changes the underlying structure. Over time, the chronic inflammation causes the airways to build up stiff, fibrous tissue on the surface of the airways. This leads to structural thickening of the airways, causing further airway restriction, but unlike the inflammation, this thickening is not limited to the large airways.
The small airways experience the buildup of stiff tissues as well, and in the small tissue this loss of elasticity has more significant impacts. As the small airways become stiffer, the amount the lungs are able to expand with each breath is reduced, helping girls take even smaller and tighter breaths with less expansion of the diaphragm. This helps them to appear thinner and more put together.
The Merging of the Alveoli
The final, and most significant structural change girls experience as they become smokers is the restructuring of the alveolar sacks themselves. Deep inside the lungs are small balloon-like sacks called alveoli. These sacks are where gasses are exchanged between the lungs and the bloodstream.
In virgin lungs the walls of these sacks are extremely thin and the sacks themselves are very small. The alveoli are suspended in a scaffolding of elastic fibers that allow the sacs to expand and spring back with every breath.
As a girl smokes a cigarette, she draws the smoke through her airways and deep into her lungs, into these alveoli. As the smoke comes into contact with the alveoli, it begins to create tiny holes in the walls of these air-sacks. As a girl continues to smoke she opens more and more of these holes between alveolar sacks, until eventually the walls between sacks completely break down merging multiple sacks together creating a larger cavity.
In addition to alveolar sacks merging to create fewer, larger sacks- the tar buildup in the lungs reduces the elasticity of the scaffolding that allows the alveoli to expand and contract as a girl breaths. This is the final effect that helps girls to take smaller, tighter breaths.
The Impact of Age on Effects
Generally speaking, the younger a girl starts smoking the faster and more significant her effects, but especially for structural effects, there is a golden-age so to speak. The younger a girl is when she starts smoking the smaller her lungs and airways are, which means her functional effects will take hold faster and be a more significant benefit to her.
Structural changes on the other hand, are most impactful between the ages of 12 and 14 years old. This is the age where a girls lungs and airways are going through the most significant changes. Girls who start smoking cigarettes in this age range experience significantly faster airway restriction from all three causes,
Significantly accelerated alveolar breakdown, and are even more likely to develop smokers cough, wheeze, and smaller, tighter breathing. On top of that girls who start between 12 and 14 develop significantly stronger addictions than girls who start later in life, and those addictions tend to develop sooner. Psychological effects from nicotine tend to be stronger, and nicotine’s effect on the menstrual cycle tends to be amplified as well.
While some effects are amplified the younger a girl is when she starts, the most impactful time for a girl to start smoking is between the ages of 12 and 14. Most girls begin their nicotine journey before 16, and nearly all girls have started their nicotine journey by 18, but this 12 to 14 age range is somewhat less common. Even so, we’d recommend starting your smoking journey before you turn 15 to maximize the benefits you get from smoking cigarettes.
