Quitting Smoking and Vaping Could Help You Avoid COVID-19, Says a Study

For several decades, doctors warned that smoking could be hazardous to a person's health. Now, side-smoking or vaping could also make you a greater target for COVID-19, according to WIZ News.

Dr. Taylor Hays, who works at Mayo Clinic at Rochester in the Nicotine Dependence Center, says that any serious person regarding quitting smoking should find ways to change their routines with tobacco use, including avoiding smoking each time you will wake up if it is your routine.

There was a speculation in the early pandemic that smoking could protect people from COVID-19, but Hays don't believe it. He said, "I told a friend of mine, if it turns out at the end of the day that cigarette smoking...is a protective device against COVID-19 infection or severe disease, I'll eat my hat."

Smoking disrupts the hairs inside the lungs, which moves mucus out of a person's system that could allow the coronavirus to settle in the lungs and spread, says Hays' studies.

Meanwhile, Jenny Prinsen, a pulmonology nurse at Mayo in La Crosse, says a study in California revealed that smoking or vaping increases the risk of becoming ill from COVID-19.

Prinsen explained that many people smoke due to stress, and going for a cigarette must not be a person's first reaction in a stressful situation.

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Daily Mail reported that a new study suggests that smoking cigarettes increases the risk of having severe COVID-19 as it dampers the body's immune response.

The laboratory studies on airway models reveal smoking stops the key immune system molecules, interferons, from working properly.

Interferons act like messengers telling which cells are infected to make proteins and fight the invading pathogen. It is essential for fighting initial infection.

Besides, Interferons also summon support from a comprehensive immune system and warn uninfected cells to prepare against a virus.

Smoking stops the pathway from working properly and causes a threefold increase in several human cells infected by the virus, the study found. The findings stand against evidence that smokers are less likely to catch COVID-19 or get severely ill.

Academics were left baffled by the data, knowing that several decades of research prove that smoking increases the risk of deadly diseases such as strokes, lung cancer, and diabetes. However, once a smoker is in the hospital, studies suggested they are more likely to see their disease in faster progress and could lead to death.

The scientists from UCLA conducted a new study that used human stem cells from donors to create air-liquid culture and airways. Researchers focused on this part of the respiratory system before the lungs.

It is where mucus is formed, and the majority of little hairs called cilia live, made to help move mucus and any trapped infections out of the body.

While some were exposed to cigarette smoke for three minutes each day over four days, some were left unabused. Then, they were both infected with SARS-CoV-2 to see how the virus will behave in both systems.

Researchers state in their paper published in Cell Stem Cell that there are between two to three times more infected cells in the models exposed to smoke than those who have unabused lungs.

Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, the author of the latest UCLA study, said that smoking cigarettes are like making holes in the walls if you think of the airways like high walls protecting a castle. Gomperts added that smoking decreases the natural defenses and allows the virus to set in.

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