Heartsick for Cigarettes

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, and the number one contributor to heart disease is cigarette smoking. According to the Cleveland Clinic and the American Heart Association (AHA), twenty percent of all deaths from heart disease in the U.S. are directly related to cigarette smoking.

The biggest dangers smoking poses to your heart are coronary heart disease, heart failure and heart attack.

Coronary heart disease (or coronary artery disease) occurs when plaque builds up inside the coronary arteries that supply your heart with oxygen-rich blood. This narrows the arteries, eventually preventing the heart from receiving the blood it needs to function properly. When the obstruction gets severe enough so that the heart can’t get enough oxygen, it frequently causes pain in the chest when an individual exercises.

Heart failure and heart attack are not the same. The term heart failure refers to the inability of the heart to pump enough blood to the body’s organs to continue their normal, healthy functioning, while a heart attack occurs when the supply of blood and oxygen to an area of heart muscle is blocked, usually by a clot in a coronary artery. With a heart attack some of the muscle of the heart actually dies. The more severe the problem, the larger the amount of tissue that dies.

Smoking is considered a major risk factor for all three conditions. Cigarette smokers have a higher risk of developing arterial plaque, high blood pressure and blood clots. It has also been shown that smoking decreases the amount of oxygen to the heart, damages the cells that line arteries and other blood vessels, decreases exercise tolerance and reduces the HDL (good) cholesterol in your blood.

The more you smoke, and the longer you smoke, the greater your risk for these conditions. People who smoke a pack a day have more than twice the risk of heart attack of non-smokers. Women who smoke and also take birth control pills multiply their chances of these conditions even further—several times over, in fact.

Luckily, most of the damage done to your heart can be undone by simply quitting smoking. Studies show that after 15 smoke-free years, a former smoker’s risk of heart disease is roughly the same as a person who never smoked at all. If you smoke, do yourself a favor: quit! Visit the National Cancer Institute’s Quitting Smoking page to get started.

Published Date: 11/13/2008