QUITTING smoking brings a multitude of health benefits, from improving your lung capacity to lowering your chances of heart attack, but many people aren’t aware that giving up the bad habit also significantly reduces risks to your sight and hearing.
That’s why Specsavers is encouraging smokers to take part in Stoptober, where smokers give up cigarettes for a whole month, to show it’s possible to give up the habit for good.
According to research, former smokers who stop smoking for 28 days are five times as likely to quit for good – so what are you waiting for?
Explaining the impact smoking has on your eyes, Giles Edmonds, Specsavers clinical services director, says: ‘Studies have shown that smoking can double your chances of developing cataracts, triple the chances of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), increase the risk of uveitis (inflammation of the middle layer of the eye) and double the risk of diabetes, which in turn could lead to diabetic retinopathy.’
While tobacco smokers remain the most at risk of developing AMD, research also indicates that vapour from e-cigarettes can cause irritation and lead to dry eye syndrome.
Smoking can also damage your hearing, with smokers being as much as 70% more likely to suffer with hearing loss than non-smokers.
Gordon Harrison, Specsavers chief audiologist, says: ‘Smoking can have a real impact on your hearing as nicotine lowers blood oxygen levels which constricts blood vessels in the body. ‘This can cause problems for your inner ear, which is where the sensitive hair cells live. These hair cells help conduct sound to your brain but if there is a lack of blood flow these can become damaged or destroyed. Unfortunately, once damaged, they cannot be restored, so neither can any hearing loss which results from this.’
Gordon adds: ‘The harmful toxins found in cigarettes can also damage neurotransmitters in the brain which help interpret sound and in some cases tinnitus can also occur as nicotine can bring on a phantom ‘ringing’ sound.’
Alongside the Stoptober challenge, many people choose to go ‘Go Sober for October’ and reducing alcohol consumption also benefits sight and hearing.
Giles says: ‘Alcohol is a diuretic, and when you lose more fluid than you take in, your body becomes dehydrated. Our eyes can become dry and irritated and we can even start to get slightly blurred vision because there are not enough tears to lubricate the eye.’
Drinking alcohol to excess can also negatively impact our hearing too as Gordon explains. ‘High alcohol consumption over a long period of time can result in damage to the central auditory cortex of the brain which can then lead to brain shrinkage. The damage to the auditory nerve then adds up, meaning even moderate drinkers are at risk,’ he says.
