When we think about the harmful effects of smoking, words such as smokers cough and lung cancer usually come to mind first, and it may seem as though the effects on the heart are forgotten about. Cigarette smoking is a great stimulus for accelerating the process of atherosclerosis, more commonly known as ‘the clogging of arteries’.

Smoking has profound effects on some of the traditional risk factors that we’ve probably all heard about at some point. Smoking has the potential to significantly increase our levels of triglycerides (a type of fat found in the blood), as well as increasing levels of bad cholesterol and lowering levels of good cholesterol (Willett et al., 1983). This might come as bad news if you thought suffering through a diet would counterbalance your smoking habit. It doesn’t look good for blood pressure either, with nicotine immediately increasing blood pressure as you smoke (Omvik, 1996). Thirdly, smoking is terrible for the health of the inner lining of your arteries. This lining, known as the endothelium, is hugely important for protecting against atherosclerosis, yet the toxins of smoking damage the lining and allow fatty deposits to begin building up in the artery (Messner & Bernhard, 2014). The final and most unfortunate blow is that smoking makes these fatty deposits unstable and more likely to rupture, clogging an artery and causing a heart attack (Lafont, 2003).

Also, it is likely that if one continues to smoke during pregnancy it’s likely that your child will inherit damage to their arteries which are noticeable even by the age of 5, making them more susceptible to atherosclerosis before even considering what they eat and how active they are (Geerts et al., 2008; Geerts et al., 2012).

The good news as all these effects can be potentially eradicated by stopping smoking. Indeed, the CONFIRM study did find that active and past smokers are more likely to have severely blocked coronary arteries compared to non-smokers. Yet all is not lost, because despite this active smokers were 2 times more likely to have a heart attack than past and non-smokers. In other words, quitting smoking won’t change the amount of disease build up in your arteries, but it will reduce the risk of heart attack and death to the levels of people who have never smoked (Nakanishi et al., 2013).

This is great news, because if you are worried about the damage you may have done with smoking – you can do a lot for you health by stopping. Within 2 months of quitting smoking, the damage to the lining of blood vessels can be repaired back to normal (Sugiura et al., 2013). Some of the damage created by smoking will take much longer to be reversed however some important features are repaired within weeks.  All the above reconfirms that it’s never too late to stop smoking.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Sources

Geerts, C. C., Bots, M. L., Grobbee, D. E. & Uiterwaal, C. S. (2008). Parental smoking and vascular damage in young adult offspring. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, 28, 2296-302.

Geerts, C. C., Bots, M. L., van der Ent, C. K., Grobbee, D. E. & Uiterwaal, C. S. (2012). Parental smoking and vascular damage in their 5-year-old children. Pediatrics, 129(1), 45-54.

Image. https://www.flickr.com/photos/superfantastic/166215927.

Lafont, A. (2003). Basic aspects of plaque vulnerability. Heart, 89(10, 1262-67.

Messner, B. & Bernhard, D. (2014). Smoking and cardiovascular disease: Mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction and early atherogenesis. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, 34(3), 509-15.

Nakanishi, R., Budoff, M. J., Gransar, H., Al-Mallah, M., Cademartiri, F. et al. (2013). Coronary artery disease extent, severity and risk among active smokers, past smokers and non-smokers: a prospective study of 13,372 patients undergoing coronary CT angiography. European Heart Journal, 34(Abstract Supplement), 366-67.

Omvik, P. (1996). How smoking affects blood pressure. Blood Pressure, 5(2), 71-7.

Sugiura, T., Dohi, Y., Yamashita, S., Tanaka, S., Ohte, N. et al. (2013). Cigarette smoking induces vascular damage of both conduit arteries and small vessels and persistent elevation of plasma serotonin unresponsive to 8 weeks of smoking cessation. European Heart Journal, 34(Abstract Supplement), 12-13.

Willett, W., Hennekens, C. H., Castelli, W., Rosner, B., Evans, D. et al. (1983). Effects of cigarette smoking on fasting triglycerides, total cholesterol, and HDL-cholesterol in women. American Heart Journal, 105(3), 417-21.