When you inhale, does all the smoke go into your lungs or does some get past the auto blocker at the lung port and sit down there in your esophagas?
Eating and breathing both travel past your throat but when we eat, there is a mechanisim that blocks the food from going into our lungs so we don't choke..
But if you are breathing and there is no need to block food from going into your lungs, doesn't it make sense that the smoke might go on past the branch opening to the lungs and sit there?
And do you think that smoke sitting down there might be doing you some kind of harm?
WELL YES IT DOES
Here's a response from Dr. OZ
Smoking can cause heartburn, and here's how: When you eat food, it travels down the esophagus from the mouth to meet up with the stomach pouch. The stomach contains an acid bath that works to break down food during digestion. Between the stomach and the esophagus is a ring of muscle called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). Its job is to keep acid from backwashing into the esophagus, and it's the reason why people feel burning in the chest. Smoking weakens this ring of muscle. Since the tissue in the esophagus is not made to withstand a constant assault from corrosive acid, it can damage the cells lining the esophagus. In this way, smoking can lead to more dangerous conditions like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and cancer of the esophagus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_esophagus
