Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

by Philipp Dettmer

Although there is an exception: Autoantibodies, a kind of antibody that can cause certain autoimmune diseases, are greatly increased. In a nutshell, if you smoke, your immune system does way more of the stuff that is bad and damaging for the body and at the same time it is worse at actually fighting your enemies, calling reinforcements, and stopping invaders from spreading. As a bonus consequence smokers have a harder time healing wounds because of their suppressed immune system not being able to help with healing as much as it should. Even if you stop smoking today, your immune system will stay suppressed for a week to months—so the earlier you quit the better. But it would be dishonest to say that there are not a few positive effects of smoking because the world is not binary: Sometimes having a toned-down immune system can be a good thing. Inflammation is a double-edged sword, indispensable for your survival, but also very harmful to you. Smokers suffer less often from inflammatory diseases simply because inflammation is regulated down if your immune system is behaving like a slug that ate a few hash brownies for breakfast. So in the case of certain inflammatory autoimmune diseases, like ulcerative colitis for example, smoking seems to offer some form of protection.