The answer to the question is a resounding YES. Smoking is unhealthy. You know it. The kids know it. Still several people haven’t yet kicked the bad habit of smoking.
Before talking about the connection between smoking and heart attack, about the evil effects of smoking, or how exactly it affects your heart health, or the reasons why should you quit, let us ponder on the basics – why do you smoke at all irrespective of the fact that it’s not doing any favor to your body? Perhaps because it gives you a rush! Perhaps because the white stick hanging loosely from your lips looks cool! Perhaps because you feel good when you smoke! There could be many reasons but all of them lead to one simple explanation – smoking is insanely addictive so even if you may want to quit still it gets difficult to do so.
Irrespective of the ‘feel good’ factors of smoking, still the fact remains constant; you are actually hurting your body. Take a pack of cigarette and now take a closer look at the warning label. It clearly says – cigarette smoking is injurious to health. It increases impatience, irritability, anxiety, and restlessness, difficulty in concentrating, decreased heart rate, and decrease in appetite or weight gain. Honestly; that’s just for the starters because exposure to nicotine over a period of time also affects your heart adversely.
As a matter of fact; nicotine alters the typical balance of chemicals in the brain. So what does this mean for you? With each puff you start feeling relaxed and less stressed, while wanting more. With this comes the next important question – what exactly happens once you try to cut back? Simple – it makes you feel irritated. It makes you feel bad. It hits you with lethargy, headache and with a downright lousy mood.
Let’s come to the point straightway – what does smoking do to your body, which puts you at risk for coronary disease?
Sad but true, smoking augments the risk of heart disease and increases the risk of stroke by 2 to 4 times. Research also reveals that women who smoke are more susceptible to heart disease as compared to men who smoke. Research has also proved that continuing to be a smoker all through your life shaves off 13-14 years from your life. This means smoking does not only stand as the risk for lung cancer but it also damages your heart.
As per the researchers and the chief cardiologist of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, exposure to nicotine damages every tissue and organ in your body and these include your lungs, heart, throat, mouth, cervix, kidneys and pancreas.
If all these research data are not enough for you then puff on this –
There are more than 4,000 chemical components that are found in cigarettes and majority of those components are harmful to human health. Yes; we are talking about the chemicals that are used in manufacturing preserve wood, chemicals that are used in making batteries, pave driveways and roads. Yes; all these and much more go into your body each and every time you inhale. Still asking; whether or not smoking causes heart disease!
Let’s take a look at how smoking damages the heart –
Smoking increases the risk of heart diseases, which includes but not limited to heart attack and stroke.
For the uninitiated; smoking typically damages the lining of your arteries. This further leads to a buildup of fatty material (medically termed as atheroma). The fatty deposits narrow the artery and can cause angina, heart attack or even in some worst cases a stroke.
Moreover; the carbon monoxide from tobacco smoke also reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood. To put it in lay language, with less amount of oxygen in your blood your heart requires pumping harder for supplying the body with the much needed and adequate amount of oxygen.
The harmful nicotine in your cigarette also stimulates your body for producing more amount of adrenaline. This in turn makes your heart beat faster. It raises your blood pressure and thus leads your heart to work even harder.
Believe it or not; your blood is likely to clot much faster, which in turn increases your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
The Risk of Second-Hand Smoke
Passive smoking or more commonly known as second hand smoking is as dangerous as first hand smoking and stands as the leading cause of heart disease in non-smokers. This means as a smoker you are not only harming your heart health but you are also causing immense harm to the health of your partner, children and friends.
As already briefed earlier; the nicotine in smoke:
- Reduces the amount of oxygen that your heart gets
- Raises the blood pressure level
- Elevates the heart rate
- Causes blood to clot
- Leads to heart attack
How exactly does quitting smoking help?
Believe it or not; soon after you stop smoking, the other odds of getting heart disease also drops dramatically. Once you stop smoking for 1 to 2 years, you would be less likely to get heart disease.
How will you feel when you quit smoking?
Take it in writing; it will be tough in fact pretty much tough but it’s so much worth it. You will crave for cigarette, you will feel so irritable, you will feel hungry, and you may cough often, you may get headache or you may even face trouble in concentrating but DO NOT resort to another ‘deadly white stick’ (read cigarette) to pacify these symptoms. These are basically the symptoms of withdrawal, which may happen because your body is so very much used to nicotine. Worry not; the withdrawal symptoms won’t last. The symptoms are strongest when you first quit however they will go away within another 10 to 14 days.
Do your heart a favor – avoid the smoke
According to the leading cardiologist in Kolkata, smoking damages the heart and the blood vessels very quickly. The fact also cannot be denied that the damage is healed quickly for most smokers who stop smoking.
It won’t be out of place to mention here; even the long-time smokers can see rapid health improvements once they quit smoking. Just within a year of quitting the bad habit, the overall risk to heart attack drops dramatically.
Even just a few cigarettes now and then can also damage the heart, so one of the best strategies to keep your heart safe from the ill effects of nicotine is to STOP SMOKING.