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Article: Smoking slows healing.(PULSE)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- March 1, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Weekly Reader Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Not that you need one, but here's another reason to stay away from cigarettes: New studies show that cigarette smoke mucks up the human body's process of healing.
When the body suffers a wound--cut, bruise, puncture, and so on--a complex reaction occurs to repair the wound, says Manuela Martins-Green, a biologist at the University of California. One step is coagulation, a process in which a clot of blood forms at the wound site. Another step is inflammation, a reaction that increases blood flow to a wound and brings in immune cells. A third step involves the appearance of fibroblasts. Those ...