File photo of cigarettes are seen during manufacturing process in BAT Cigarette Factory in Bayreuth
Lucky Strike cigarettes are seen during the manufacturing process in the British American Tobacco Cigarette Factory (BAT) in Bayreuth, southern Germany, April 30, 2014. Reuters/Michaela Rehle/File Photo

You don't need to be a genius to know that smoking causes cancer and is extremely dangerous for your health. While knowledge about cancer and its direct relation with the habit is quite clear, people still do not know of many other things that are attached with smoking. The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) states that apart from lung diseases, diabetes, heart diseases and stroke are also caused by smoking. The worst however, is that even those who do not indulge in the habit but are exposed to the smoke are vulnerable to smoking related diseases. Such persons are called passive smokers.

Here are a few not so well known facts about smoking.

Smoking causes chronic cataract

According to the American Lung Association, smoking contributes to a variety of diseases, including chronic cataract. Cataract is the major cause of blindness; smoking damages the lens protein and triples the possibility of developing cataracts, the report Smoking and cataract: review of causal association, states. This is true both for active and passive smokers.

Increases risk of Diabetes

Initially the Surgeon General's report 2010 had found a link between smoking and the development of diabetes; it however wasn't clear as to how the habit would cause the disease. The report The Health Consequences of Smoking - 50 Years of Progress, 2014 found that active smokers are highly at risk of developing diabetes and this time they had proof as well. The report stated that by quitting the habit, the risk of developing diabetes drastically reduces.

Lung cancer is not the only cancer that smoking causes

It is no shocker that smoking causes lung cancer. Medical News Today states that it also causes bladder cancer kidney cancer, stomach cancer, bowel cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, mouth cancer, esophagus cancer, cancer of the pancreas, throat cancer, cancer of the nose and sinuses and in some cases even breast cancer. It also increases the chances of the cancer reoccurring.

Affects the immune system

Smoking causes inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Smokers are more vulnerable to influenza and pneumonia. The chemicals in the cigarette go damage the body's immune response. It also decreases the antioxidant levels in the blood.

It causes orofacial clefts in infants

The National Birth Defect Prevention Study has found that nearly 2600 infants are born with this condition. And they have also confirmed that active women smokers are at a higher risk than non smokers to give birth to children with orofacial cleft.