Save Your Heart

If you ask the average person what the greatest risk associated with smoking is, they will probably answer cancer – or more specifically, lung cancer. Despite the wide range of cancers that smoking puts you at risk of developing, cancer is not even the greatest risk associated with this habit: It’s cardiovascular disease.

The CDC, according to WhyQuit.com, attributes about one-quarter of smoking deaths to lung cancer. However, more than 40 percent of smoking deaths are the result of cardiovascular disease – and most of these deaths are the result of heart disease and strokes.

Smoking damages the heart muscle and blood vessels, causing them to thicken and narrow. The chemicals inhaled during smoking trigger the body’s fight-or-flight response – which causes the heart to beat faster and blood pressure to increase. While the body has an excellent response when faced with a life-or-death situation, those situations are meant to come few and far between – rather than 20 times daily, as in the case of a pack-a-day smoker. This regular revving of the body’s internal engine causes severe wear and tear on the heart muscle and blood vessels.

Smoking also can cause blood clots to form in the body, which can lodge in the lungs or elsewhere, blocking blood flow to the brain, resulting in a stroke.

It Doesn’t Just Affect You

Smokers often argue that they aren’t hurting anyone but themselves when confronted with the dangers of their habit, and this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Of the 480,000 Americans who die each year as a result of tobacco use, more than 41,000 of these deaths are attributed to exposure to secondhand smoke – in other words, nearly 3,500 Americans die each month because they were chronically exposed to the habit of a loved one.