How Does Smoking Cause Heart Disease?

Lung cancer get’s a lot of the attention from cigarette smoking, in truth many more people die at a young age from circulatory related problems than lung disease. If there were fewer deaths from smoking related heart problems, we would actually have a much higher death rate caused by lung cancer.

Smoking in any form, even cigars, will have the effect of increasing LDL cholesterol and decreasing HDL cholesterol. It also slightly increases triglycerides. This is a has a double whammy effect because it harmfully affects all your cholesterol levels. Cholesterol levels have a direct relationship with coronary artery disease, known as atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis, which is a condition in which arteries become coagulated and congested. Blocked arteries can keep the heart from getting enough blood and oxygen, and may cause chest pain angina. If a blood clot forms, it can cut off blood flow in the blood vessel and cause a heart attack.

Smoking speeds up the process of atherosclerosis by damaging the cells lining the blood vessels and heart. Smoking can also raise your risk of dangerous blood clots, because of the atherosclerosis and because smoking causes blood platelets to stick together.

Cigarette smoke contains many hazardous substances, in the development of heart disease, these substances play an important role. Our blood vessels have endothelial cells on the inner side of the blood vessel. These cells inhibit clotting of our blood inside the vessel. Substances in the smoke damage the walls of our vessel’s by damaging the endothelial cells. When the endothelial cells are damaged, cholesterol and fat get accumulated under the endothelial layer.

This causes a swelling inside the vessel, so this swelling narrows the lumen of the vessel this reduces the blood supply to the area which that blood vessel is supplying so if that blood vessel is supplying the heart , this leads to Angina. And if that bulge completely obstructs the vessel lumen, or that bulge bursts inside the vessel causing clot formation inside the blood vessel, then it leads to Myocardial Infraction (A Heart Attack).

Smoking is more commonly associated with chronic lung conditions like lung cancer or COPD, most people don’t think about heart disease when they take the first breath of their morning cigarette. But smoking is a major cause of heart disease for men and women. In the United States , deaths from heart disease directly related to smoking have been in the twenty percent range.

Did you know that your risk of heart disease and heart attack increases with the number of cigarettes you smoke? In fact, if you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day, your risk of heart attack increases by more than two-fold.

But it doesn’t stop there…you will continue to increase your risk of heart disease the more that you smoke.

Smoking causes high blood pressure and the carbon monoxide in cigarettes inhibits the blood’s ability to transport oxygen to the heart efficiently. Smoking also increases bad high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, as well as increased levels of platelets and fibrinogen, both of which encourage blood clots.