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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question, what happens

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Speaker 1: when pregnant women smoke cigarettes? By now, most people can

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Speaker 1: agree that smoking is not such a great idea for anyone.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty easy to come up with a list of

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Speaker 1: all the health problems that can afflict people who smoke cigarettes,

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Speaker 1: including sinus problems, difficulty breathing, and eventually emphysema, cancer, increased

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Speaker 1: risk of heart disease, increased risk of stroke, and so on.

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Speaker 1: Most of the damage caused by cigarette smoking doesn't appear

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Speaker 1: for years or decades, though, making a difficult to convince

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Speaker 1: smokers to give up their habit until it's too late. However,

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Speaker 1: when a pregnant woman smokes, the nicotine and other compounds

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Speaker 1: found in tobacco pose both an immediate and an extended

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Speaker 1: threat to the health of her developing child. These dangers

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Speaker 1: include increased risk of miscarriage, increased risk of sudden infant

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Speaker 1: death syndrome, premature birth, low birth weight, behavioral problems like hyperactivity,

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Speaker 1: and reduced verbal and mathematical ability. Many chemicals, including nicotine,

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Speaker 1: can readily move from the mother's blood stream into the

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Speaker 1: fetal blood supply. This is why physicians are so cautious

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Speaker 1: about what over the counter and prescription drugs women take

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Speaker 1: when they're expecting a child. When a pregnant woman inhales

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Speaker 1: cigarette smoke, she exposes herself and her fetus to things like,

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Speaker 1: first of all, nicotine. If you smoke while pregnant, your

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Speaker 1: child will be exposed to almost the same level of

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Speaker 1: nicotine as you. That means that once he or she

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Speaker 1: is born and is no longer getting nicotine intravenously, the

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Speaker 1: symptoms of nicotine withdrawal will likely set in. Nicotine also

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Speaker 1: affects the wiring of the developing brain, depending on when

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Speaker 1: during brain development, exposure occurs. Nicotine can reduce the number

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Speaker 1: of neurons in a brain region or change the way

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Speaker 1: the neurons signal each other. Neither of these options is

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Speaker 1: particularly appetizing when you think about it. Then, there's cyanide.

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Speaker 1: Cyanide prevents cells from using oxygen for various metabolic processes,

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Speaker 1: and it's one of the most deadly poisons around. There's

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Speaker 1: also carbon monoxide in the smoke. That's another poison that

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Speaker 1: diminishes the oxygen reaching the fetus. There's cadmium, found in

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Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries. This heavy metal damages your kidneys. Without proper

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Speaker 1: filtration and excretion by the kidneys, waste products from different

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Speaker 1: cellular processes build up in your blood. There's also arsenic,

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Speaker 1: another heavy metal that interferes with the conversion of food

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Speaker 1: to fuel inside your cells, and formaldehyde, which locks proteins

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Speaker 1: in a rigid formation. With the exception of nicotine, which

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Speaker 1: scientists know is a major problem, it's not thought that

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Speaker 1: there's enough of any of these other chemicals in cigarette

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Speaker 1: smoke to cause severe damage to either the smoker or

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Speaker 1: the baby. It's more likely that all of these compounds

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Speaker 1: in combination have the net effect of messing things up

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Speaker 1: in lots of small ways. This may be one reason

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Speaker 1: why baby is born to smokers are smaller than average

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Speaker 1: for more illness, and thousands of other topics. Does that

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Speaker 1: house stuff works? Dot com? And don't forget to check

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Speaker 1: out the brain Stuff blog on the house stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com home page. You can also follow brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter at brain stuff HSW. This episode

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