According to the results of studies conducted in various countries, it was found that the body weight of children who were given birth by women smokers during pregnancy is less on average by 160 - 230 g than the body weight of children whose mothers did not smoke. It was also found that women who smoke during pregnancy have premature births two to three times more often. It was also estimated that every fourth child born dead would have survived if their parents had not smoked and knew about the harm of tobacco and alcohol for the health of children.
In young children in a smoking room, sleep is disturbed, appetite decreases, often there is an intestinal disorder. In mental and physical development, children begin to lag behind their peers. Adolescents who started to smoke become anemic, irritable, progress in school decreases, they get sick more often, they lag behind in sports. It was revealed that if we accept the work capacity of schoolchildren whose body is not influenced by tobacco, take it for a hundred, then it maintains a small number of smokers at ninety-two, while many smokers decrease to seventy-seven. Significantly more repeaters among children who smoke. Usually, children smoke hastily, secretly, while it is known that with rapid combustion from tobacco into smoke passes several times more nicotine, in contrast to the slow combustion. Accordingly, the harm from smoking is further exacerbated. Many adolescents often smoke cigarette butts, basically they finish the cigarette to the end, that is, the part of tobacco containing most of the toxic substances is used. When buying cigarettes, children spend some of the money they gave out for lunch, and as a result do not eat. Often you can see how the guys smoke a big company with the same cigarette, passing it from one to the other. With this method of smoking, the risk of transmission of infectious diseases increases. The picking up of cigarettes from the ground or begging them in adults is even more dangerous.
It is also necessary to talk about the dangers of alcohol and how it affects the immature body of children and adolescents. For almost forty years, scientists around the world have been more and more worried about the dangers facing the younger generation - young people, adolescents and children. It is a question of the ever increasing scope of alcohol consumption by minors. For example, in the United States of America, 91% of 16-year-old schoolchildren consume alcoholic beverages. In Canada, approximately 90% of students in grades 7-9 consume alcohol. In the Federal Republic of Germany, one percent of children aged 8-10 years are detained by the police in a state of intoxication.
Probably, do not have a special imagination, in order to imagine the damage that can cause a teenager even a single use of beer or even wine. Modern research suggests that there are no tissues and organs in the human body that are not affected by alcohol. Upon ingestion, it slowly breaks down in the liver. Only 10% of the total amount of alcohol consumed is excreted unchanged from the body. The remaining amount of alcohol circulates throughout the body with blood, until the whole is split. In view of the high permeability of "young" tissues, their saturation with water makes it possible for alcohol to spread very quickly throughout the body.
Toxic effects of alcoholic beverages primarily affect the activity of the nervous system. If you take the blood alcohol content per unit, then in the brain it will be 1.75, and in the liver - 1.45. Even a small dose of alcohol affects the exchange of nerve tissues, the transmission of nerve impulses. At the same time, the work of the cerebral vessels worsens: there is an increase in permeability, expansion, brain hemorrhage. At a young age, the brain tissue is less saturated with phosphorus and richer in water, is in the stage of functional and structural improvement, so alcohol is especially dangerous for it. Even a single drink can have very serious consequences.
Frequent or repeated use of alcohol has a devastating effect on the psyche of a young person. At the same time, not only the development of higher forms of thinking is inhibited, the development of moral and ethical categories and aesthetic concepts, but the abilities that have already evolved are vanishing.
The next "target" is the liver. It is in this organ that its splitting takes place under the action of enzymes. If the rate of alcohol production in the liver is higher than the decay rate, then alcohol accumulation occurs, which leads to damage to the liver cells. The structure of the liver cells is disrupted, resulting in tissue degeneration. With the systematic use of alcohol, fatty changes in liver cells cause necrosis of the liver tissue - resulting in cirrhosis that almost always accompanies chronic alcoholism. On the body of a teenager, alcohol has an even more destructive effect, since the liver is in the stage of structural and functional formation. Affected liver cells lead to a violation of carbon and protein metabolism, the synthesis of enzymes and vitamins. Alcohol, you can say, "corrodes" the mucous membrane of the stomach, esophagus, disrupts the secretion and composition of gastric juice. This worsens the process of digestion, which in the end negatively affects the development and growth of the adolescent.
Thus, alcohol weakens the body, inhibits maturation and the formation of its systems and organs, and in some instances, for example, when it is abused, completely stops the development of individual elements of the higher nervous system. The smaller the age of the organism, the more harmful alcohol acts on it. In addition, the use of alcohol by teenagers leads to the formation of alcoholism much faster than in adults.
Now you know about the harm of tobacco and alcohol for the health of children, so you will be more attentive to the hobbies and lifestyle of your sons and daughters.