Smoking is often associated with having various lung-related diseases like cancer and tuberculosis. But we often forget that aside from lungs, almost every organ in the human body will be affected by this bad habit. Not only that, by choosing to smoke every day, we are actually lessening our chances for a longer lifespan. In fact, we are the ones who are slowly killing ourselves on the process. And not because you are not feeling anything will mean that every part of your body is doing fine. With every cigarette stick you purchase and savor, a part of you is gradual gets destroyed. One of these is our heart, which is a vital component of our body, being in-charge of our blood circulation, which generally affects our whole system.
We all know that the process of blood circulation not only makes our physical bodies to be able to function properly. Every nutrient and other necessary things that are needed by the different organs in the body is transported and received in this process, like the nutrients from everything that we consume, and the oxygen as well. When we smoke, we are letting the chemicals like nicotine and carbon monoxide to bring up problems to our bodies. So, aside from the lung-associated conditions, diseases like heart failure, stroke, and Beuerger’s disease happens mostly because of smoking cigarette.
How Smoking Affects the Circulation of our Blood
Blood Clots
Dr. Ho promoter recognizes how both nicotine and carbon monoxide affect much of our circulatory system. Nicotine, aside from having an addictive property, it also has a negative impact on our arteries. Acting as a stimulant, it can speed up the heartbeat for up to 20 beats per minute for every smoked cigarette. This can also raise blood pressure. Worse, being a vasoconstrictor, it makes the arteries smaller which gives a harder time for the heart since it will exert more effort to pump more blood. And as the heart keeps on functioning harder, other organs in the body will suffer too plus they will all be needing more oxygen in their systems to cover up the additional workloads.
The carbon monoxide, on the other hand, brings another worse effect on our body, While nicotine gives additional burden by speeding the functions of the organ, carbon monoxide busies itself by carrying and spreading its poison to our blood. And as the person keeps on smoking, this scenario internally will become an unending process that slowly destructs our entire body.
To continue, a normal artery has big openings which aid in the transportation of the oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. The artery of the smoking person has its artery with the blood clotted which blocks the blood and nutrients to flow. Without the proper circulation, the tissues here will surely suffocate and will be useless in just a matter of minutes. The coronary artery, or the artery that supplies blood to the heart, is one of those arteries that experiences the bad effects of smoking.
In the case of the coronary artery, like the other arteries, smoking causes it to have a blood clot, cutting off the blood supply to the heart muscle area where it transports blood. This results in myocardial infarction, or the death of a heart muscle that was not able to receive blood from the coronary artery. Without any blood to pump it, the whole part of that heart muscle is no longer can be used, causing it to die.
Clogs
As we can see, both nicotine and carbon monoxide cause most of the blood clots in our body parts constituting the circulatory system. Generally, once there is a blood clot, the blood flow is interrupted, making the tissues unable to function well until it dies. Aside from these, there is another bad effect that cigarettes can give to our system, the clog.
Clogs happen when there is a gradual build-up of fat deposits in a certain area in our body. Like what happens when there is a blood clots, the flat build-up can obstruct the blood flow from our arteries. What is worse is that clogs can also happen to other areas of our body.
For the arteries, nicotine as a vasoconstrictor, it also makes other parts of our body to release its own stored fats and cholesterol. Carbon dioxide, meanwhile, makes the fats get stuck to the arteries because it can lower the level of oxygen of the blood.
These clogging and clotting scenarios are some of the primary reasons why smokers are at the very high risk of having bad conditions to their heart and other parts of the body. And just as we think that these only affect our heart and brain, it can bring worse impact to the other body parts as well.
