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If you smoke while pregnant, your daughters may not grow upto be able to have children of their own. Researchersbelieve this is because smoke from tobacco damages theirdeveloping fallopian tubes, where fertilization of the eggtakes place.

Researchers did a study of 239 women who were undergoingin-vitro fertilization and found that 68% of the smokersshowed signs of tubal disease, compared to 29% of thenon-smokers. They found that women whose mothers smoked weremuch more likely to show signs of tubal disease than thosewhose mothers did not. The figures were 52.5% compared to28.8%.
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The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization warns that lung cancer isn?t the only type of cancer caused by smoking and passive smoke inhalation. Cancers of the stomach, liver, cervix and kidney and myeloid leukemia are also linked to smoking. They found no evidence of a link between smoking and breast, endometrial or prostate cancers.

The reviewed more than 3,000 research papers on tobacco smoking and cancer, both active and passive, in order to come to this conclusion. “This is the first time a global organization is saying second-hand smoking is harmful to humans,” says Jonathan Samet of IARC. So don?t sit in too many smoky rooms and don?t listen to anyone who tells you that secondhand smoke isn?t dangerous.
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Nicotine can kill brain cells and stop new ones forming in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory, says Pier Piazza of France’s National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Bordeaux. The finding might explain the cognitive problems experienced by many heavy smokers when they try to quit.

The team allowed rats to self-administer doses of nicotine daily for six weeks. At blood nicotine levels comparable to those found in smokers, they found the creation of new neurons in the hippocampus was cut by up to 50 per cent. Cell death also increased.The implications for smokers and for those using nicotine gum or patches to help them give up are unclear.
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