It is National Kick Butts Day -- time to kick the smoking habit.
About 20 percent of Michigan residents smoke -- and in an effort to get that number down even lower, here is a reminder about how smoking affects your body.
It could make you lose your hearing. New research from Japan found that smokers are nearly one and a half times more likely to suffer hearing loss than non-smokers. Researchers don't know why yet and are planning a follow up study to hopefully find the answer.
Smoking also puts you at an 80 percent higher risk of lung cancer, can cause early menopause, heart disease, infertility, overall cancer risk and wrinkles -- and that's just to name a few.
Kudos to those who do find the will power to quit smoking because it's not easy to do.
One of the reasons for that is that nicotine is so addictive. In fact, many heroin addicts have said it's easier to quit the drug than to quit smoking. There have been studies on this and one of the reasons is because nicotine goes beyond affecting your brain, it also has therapeutic and ritualistic effects.
Some crave smoking because it calms their nerves, others because it's what they do when they drink coffee. Those habits are proven harder to break.
The FDA is now realizing this connection and just last week started taking steps to lower the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels. They believe it could help 5-million adults quit within a year but they are still working on those regulations.
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