Smoking and Heart Diseases: Effects, Risks & Disadvantages

Dr. Bikash Majumder
3 min readJun 25, 2021

--

Tobacco has been a part of our civilization for centuries. The cancerous effects of tobacco were discovered only decades ago. Smoking and heart disease are also interlinked to each other in the long run. If you want to have a long and healthy life, taking care of your heart is very important.

But cigarette smoking can be hazardous to your heart’s health, up to a certain point when it may cause high risks and even death. It certainly reduces oxygen supply in your body and also causes difficult conditions for your cardiac health.

Let’s find out how smoking affects heart health in the next section.

Smoking and Heart Disease: Risk Factors of Smoking in Heart Disease
Smoking is related to lung cancer risks, but it is also the cause of difficult cardiovascular conditions. Smoking-related illness cases have risen in the last couple of years. Reason? We are well aware of the element that cigarettes contain in most parts, called Nicotine.

Nicotine has so many harmful effects on our health, especially heart health. Like:

● Reducing the amount of oxygen your heart should be getting.
● It causes high blood pressure, which is known as hypertension.
● It increases your heartbeat.
● Sometimes when you are smoking for a long time, it may lead to blood clots which ultimately end up in heart attacks or strokes.
● Your blood vessels get damaged.
● You can develop coronary heart disease.

Smoking and heart disease have more interrelated connections than you can imagine. Even the passive smokers around you could develop severe lung conditions due to consuming even though they are not smokers themselves. Tobacco is said to carry thousands of carcinogens, which cause cancer in our hearts, lungs, blood, and other organs.

Cigarette smoking also causes atherosclerosis and your blood gets thickened in the arteries, which hinder blood circulation through blood vessels and arteries to reach the vital organs like the heart and brain.

Rare Heart Health Conditions: How Smoking Affects Heart
The risk factors of smoking in heart disease are never-ending. Death rates due to complicated cardiovascular conditions caused by smoking are increasing by the year. It is a big concern amongst cardiologists worldwide.

Some rare cardiovascular conditions caused by smoking are:

1. Peripheral Artery Disease: It is a rare condition where the blood vessels get narrowed down, leading to insufficient blood flow to our organs. Cigarette Smoking is one of the primary causes of this condition which often leads to amputation.
2. Abdominal aortic aneurysm: Aorta is the main artery that reaches blood throughout the body. Smoking causes a bulge to form in this area. The bursting of an abdominal aortic aneurysm leads to immediate death. Aortic aneurysm deaths are more common in women than men. And most cases, the cause of death from this condition is how smoking affects the heart.

Quitting smoking is not easy, but it is not impossible either. As you can see, how smoking and heart disease are related to each other spread the awareness as much as you can.

So, quit smoking today and take your step to prevent a heart attack.

--

--

Dr. Bikash Majumder
Dr. Bikash Majumder

Written by Dr. Bikash Majumder

0 Followers

Dr Bikash Mazumdar is a heart specialist doctor in Kolkata who can provide specialized heart treatment. https://cardiodoctorbikash.com/

No responses yet