Bad News For The Smokers

We all know that smoking affects our lungs, but unknown to many of us, its worst effect is on our hearts.

Smoking, certainly, is bad for the lungs. It can cause lung cancer and emphysema, a condition in which the lungs lose their power to deflate. Another equally serious problem that smokers may suffer from is chronic bronchitis.

The effect of smoking on the heart and the circulatory system is much more mysterious.
For this reason, the connection between smoking and heart health is not well-understood by the average person, nor is it widely accepted as a bad result of the smoking habit.

Statistics show that smokers have a higher risk of getting a heart attack than do nonsmokers; should smokers suffer a heart attack, they have twenty times greater risk of dying from the attack.

There’s no doubt that smoking is bad for the heart. But why does it weaken the heart?

Carbon monoxide is the culprit. Tobacco smoke contains that odorless gas which hurts the heart. Oxygen, not carbon dioxide, is the gas that the heart loves; lack of oxygen in this vital organ can trigger attacks—and eventual death for the individual.

The heart, furthermore, utilizes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, and takes from the blood a hundred percent of the oxygen during sleep and other rest periods.

The nicotine in tobacco smoke also has a bad effect on the heart. Being a powerful drug, nicotine is particularly harmful to a weakened heart because it upsets the normal electrical impulses which are the sparks which cause the heart to function.

Although the heart is said to be the most powerful organ of the body, beating about 100,000 times a day, we should take good care of it. Remember, we only have one heart!