In this video, Dr. Aarush Manchanda (a non-invasive cardiologist and the author of The Artisan’s Approach) discusses what smoking can do to your health and why even one puff can kill you.

Coming from India, Dr. Aarush Manchanda is used to people smoking like chimneys but doesn’t hesitate when he says that we all know smoking is bad for our health. The frequency and dose of cigarettes that people consume correlates with the outcome of their smoking habit. The more people smoke, the higher their risk of heart disease and lung cancer.

“Smoking kills” is a statement we’ve all heard a million times, regardless of whether we’re a smoker or not. But one area that’s a little more hidden behind the smoke screens is what effect social smoking can have on our health.

The Effects of Social Smoking on Us and Our Heart Health

If Dr. Manchanda had a dollar for every time he’d been asked about social smoking, he’d be a billionaire. While he agrees that lighting up a cigar once a month is better than smoking daily, he also warns that there’s still an unknown element that should put people off of smoking, even infrequently.

We already know that smoking, like any poison, will have an effect on heart health, especially when you’re chain-smoking thousands of cigarettes a day. But we also need to take into consideration that there’s a stochastic chance (a random chance) of mutation. The nicotine and tar from cigarettes pass through our urine, which actually means that smoking is a risk for bladder cancer too. This is something we can’t even predict with a crystal ball.

For people who smoke occasionally, there might not be actual physical effects that can be measured but sometimes there’s this random chance that they can get cancer. Why? Because it takes just one mutation.

That’s why you’ll hear doctors saying that even one puff is bad for you. And that’s because, despite being geniuses, they can’t tell from the entire herd which one of us is going to have a mutation that results in cancer.