The smoke effect on the heart is much worse than previously thought. Because not only is the heart more fragile in smokers but it tends to thicken its walls, with weaker and less effective muscle tissue. Which makes him miss shots more easily. Thankfully, saying goodbye to cigarettes means recovering heart health, when obviously there is no permanent damage. But the sooner they forget, the better.
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Research conducted in Denmark by Eve Holt of the Herlevand Gentofte hospital in Copenhagen, presented at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology held in Barcelona. The survey shows that the more you smoke, the greater the damage to heart function and therefore the heart is less likely to push the blood necessary for the body.
The more you smoke, the worse it works. By stopping, you recover in part
“The study says that smokers have a smaller volume of blood in the left heart chamber and less energy to pump it into the rest of the body,” explains the expert. The more you smoke, the worse your heart function becomes. The heart can recover to some extent. with smoking cessation, so it’s never too late to quit. ” According to estimates, cigarette smoking is responsible for 50% of all avoidable deaths among smokers: half of these are due to atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. Smoking is also known to be associated with an increased risk of heart failure, with the myocardium not pumping blood around the body as it should, usually because it is too weak or stiff. This means that the body is not getting the oxygen and nutrients it needs to function normally.
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The research, in particular, wanted to find out if there was a correlation between smoking and changes in the structure and function of the heart in people, starting from the data of the fifth Copenhagen City Heart Study which studied cardiovascular risk factors and diseases in the general population. . A total of 3,874 participants aged 20 to 99 (mean age 56) without heart disease were enrolled. Through a questionnaire, the cigarettes smoked during their life were then evaluated in all subjects using one year / packet as a parameter (20 cigarettes smoked every day for one year). Then, through the ultrasound and after excluding the weight of any other risk factors, the structure of the heart was assessed.
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For weaker and heavier heart smokers
The researchers compared the echocardiography measurements of current smokers with those of nonsmokers. Nearly one in five participants were current smokers (18.6%), while 40.9% were former smokers and 40.5% had never smoked. Compared to non-smokers, current smokers had weaker and heavier hearts. “We found that current smoking and accumulated years were associated with worsening of the structure and function of the left heart chamber, the most important part of the heart, she says.” The time factor, of course, is important: it has also been seen that in ten years those who have continued to smoke have developed a heart with less thin walls, heavier and weaker. In any case, in these people, the heart muscle was less able to pump blood than in non-smokers and those who quit.
Over time, smoking causes tachycardia and hypertension
In those who smoke, the heart is forced to work harder, so it gets tired more easily and can go into decompensation. Over time, smoking increases the number of beats, inducing tachycardia, and causes an increase in blood pressure, favoring the onset of a real hypertensive state. As if this were not enough, the amount of blood transported inside the arteries decreases, which creates a greater demand from the peripheral tissues. In practice, the heart has to make an ever greater effort while the fuel decreases, that is the blood arriving from the coronary arteries that supply it. This mechanism over the years affects the resistance of the myocardium. Again: nicotine favors the narrowing of the arterial caliber and modifies the normal component of fat in the blood, increasing the LDL lipoproteins which tend to keep cholesterol inside the vessels and therefore increasing the risk of vascular occlusions.