While the popular belief is that smoking largely affects the lungs because they get directly exposed to inhaled smoke, health experts warn that it also impacts the entire cardiovascular system. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), smoking tobacco is globally the second leading cause of heart diseases after high blood pressure. Nearly 12 % of cardiovascular deaths worldwide occur due to tobacco abuse and secondhand smoking.
In tobacco cigarette, there is combustion, a burning of an organic material that generates temperatures up to 900 degree Celsius. Chronic exposure to this tends to thicken blood vessels, making them weaker in the long run. This can lead to blood clots and ultimately result in stroke or peripheral heart diseases.
“Inhaling the smoke from tobacco builds fatty material -- atheroma -- in the heart of the smoker which then damages the inner lining of arteries and also narrows them further,” Tapan Ghose, Director & HOD, Cardiology at Fortis Flt. Lt. Rajan Dhall Hospital, told IANS. “This narrowing can cause the angina, stroke or heart attack,” he added.
Further, the presence of nicotine in the cigarettes raises the blood pressure, which can have a detrimental effect on the heart’s oxygen balance. “Nicotine causes thickening of the blood vessels, which hampers the blood flow and also causes high blood pressure or hypertension,” Mukesh Goel, Senior Consultant, Cardio Thoracic & Vascular Surgery at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, told IANS.
Tobacco also has carbon monoxide, which blends with haemoglobin in the blood more easily than oxygen does, thus affecting the oxygen supply in the body. The carbon monoxide prevents the blood system from effectively carrying oxygen around the body, specifically to vital organs such as the heart and brain, the experts said, adding that apart from regular smokers, those who inhale the smoke passively may also be at risk.
WHO states that of the seven million lives that tobacco claims worldwide each year, almost 900,000 are passive-smokers. Tobacco, whether smoked, swallowed, or chewed poses multiple hazards. In addition to affecting the lungs and heart, it also increases the risk of head and neck, lung, esophageal, pancreatic, and urologic cancers.
According to a recent study published in The Journal of Physiology, smoking could directly damage the muscles by reducing the number of blood vessels in leg muscles, which in turn reduce the amount of oxygen and nutrients the muscles receive. This may impact the metabolism and activity levels. Moreover, smoking also affects both male and female fertility, doctors said.
“Women smoking tobacco reduce their chances of conceiving by at least 60% and is also linked to ectopic pregnancy and other tubal factor infertility,” Sagarika Aggarwal, an IVF expert at Indira IVF Hospital, New Delhi, told IANS. On the other hand, male smokers can suffer from decreased sperm quality with lower mobility and increased numbers of abnormally-shaped sperms. Moreover, chain smoking might also decrease the sperm’s ability to fertilise eggs. Besides causing infertility, tobacco during pregnancy can also lead to multiple issues ranging from miscarriage to under-development of the foetus and making the child susceptible to various forms of disorder such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Goel noted.
Quitting is the best way, the experts said while discouraging the use of alternatives like e-cigarettes. “While it is true that e-cigarettes have less quantity of tobacco as compared to regular cigarettes, bidis or hookah, but they also expose lungs, heart and other organs to very high levels of toxic substances,” Goel said. Other measures like clinical interventions, counselling and behavioural therapies can help people quit tobacco abuse.
“Nicotine replacement therapy, including nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, inhalers etc, has been found to be effective. Combination therapy with drugs like bupropion has been found to be more effective than nicotine replacement alone,” said Viveka Kumar, Senior Director, Max Heart & Vascular Institute, Saket.
Kumar also emphasised on the role of mass media in spreading awareness about the harmful effects of tobacco, while curbing the easy access to tobacco, especially among the younger vulnerable population. “Availability and accessibility of smoking cessation programmes to smokers who want to stop smoking remains an area which needs to be addressed,” Kumar said.
Exercise doesn’t just keep you healthy and fit. Turns out, it can also help people fight addiction. A study conducted by the University of Buffalo has identified a key mechanism on how aerobic exercise can help impact the brain in ways that may support treatment and prevention strategies for addiction.
Aerobic exercises are a form of cardio exercise that increase the heart rate, breathing and circulation of oxygen through the blood. It can also help people who are suffering from diabetes, heart disease and arthritis. It also offers mental health benefits, such as reducing stress, anxiety and depression.
“Several studies have shown that, in addition to these benefits, aerobic exercise has been effective in preventing the start, increase and relapse of substance use, including alcohol, nicotine, stimulants and opioids,” said Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, the senior author of the study.
Using animal models, Thanos and his team found that daily aerobic exercise altered the mesolimbic dopamine pathway in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with substance use disorders, and plays an important role in reward, motivation and learning.
The study is published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Other interesting ways to kick addictions
* Nose spray that helps you kick gambling habit
In January, Finnish researchers said they were to launch a study to see if gambling addiction can be treated with a fast-working nasal spray. The spray contains naloxone, an emergency treatment for opiate overdoses (heroin, opium, morphine) that blocks the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure with a central role in addictions.
* Facebook to quit smoking
A clinical trial done by the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) shows that smokers were 2.5 times more likely to quit post a cessation intervention programme delivered entirely on social networking giant Facebook than by other online quit-smoking programmes.
* Cut down on sugar to overcome alcohol addiction
It is believed that alcohol has a direct connection with sugar. So, if you want to avoid craving for liquor, cut down on your sweet intake.
If you believe that smoking affects only the lungs, then you may be wrong as a new study showed that components in cigarette smoke may directly damage the muscles in your leg as well.
According to the researchers, smoking could directly damage the muscles by reducing the number of blood vessels in leg muscles, which in turn reduce the amount of oxygen and nutrients the muscles received.
“It is vitally important that we show people that the use of tobacco cigarettes has harmful consequences throughout the body, including large muscle groups needed for daily living, and develop strategies to stop the damage triggered by the detrimental components of cigarette smoke,” said lead author Ellen Breen from the University of California-San Diego, US.
Using a mouse model, a team of researchers from California along with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Kochi University in Japan, exposed the mice to smoke from tobacco cigarettes for eight weeks, either by inhalation or by injecting them with a solution bubbled with smoke.
The results, published in The Journal of Physiology, also showed that the reduced level of oxygen and nutrients due to reduced blood vessels may impact the metabolism and activity levels.
Both these are risk factors for many chronic diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes.
The study, however, could not identify the chemical responsible out of the 4,000 chemicals in a cigarette smoke that caused the muscle damage.
Researchers said that further study is needed to identify them, along with understanding the process by which they reduce the number of blood vessels.
If boys start smoking pot in early teenage life, they may be at a higher risk of developing drug problem as a young adult, a new study has said.
The findings, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, suggested that boys who start smoking pot before the age of 15 are much more likely to have a drug problem at 28 than those who start at 15 or after.
According to the researchers, in these teens, the risk of having a drug abuse problem by age 28 is 68 per cent. But if they start smoking between 15 and 17 the risk drops to 44 per cent.
“The odds of developing any drug abuse symptoms by age 28 were non-significant if cannabis use had its onset at ages 15 to 17, but were significant and almost doubled each year if onset was before age 15,” the researchers, including Charlie Rioux from Universite de Montreal, said.
For the study, the researchers recruited 1,030 boys. Every year between ages 13 and 17, they were asked if they had consumed cannabis at all in the previous year.
At the age of 17, 20 and 28, the boys were again asked if they consumed cannabis as well as other drugs, including hallucinogens, cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilisers, heroin and inhalants.
The data were then correlated with the age at which they started using cannabis, the researcher said.
The results confirmed that the younger boys started smoking marijuana, the more likely they had a drug problem later as young men.
Even if those who start smoking cannabis at 17 years were at lower risk, frequent users — 20 or more times a year — at age 17 had almost double the chance of abuse by age 28 than occasional users.
“Since peer influence and delinquency were identified as early risk factors for earlier cannabis onset and adult drug abuse, targeting these risk factors in prevention programmes may be important, especially since prevention strategies working on the motivators of substance use have been shown to be effective,” Rioux noted.
Finding it hard to beat your nicotine addiction? A common drug that helps in diabetes management might help people – and without any withdrawal symptoms, finds a study.
The study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University showed that metformin potentially blocks symptoms of nicotine withdrawal in rodents.
The team exposed laboratory mice to a two-week regimen of nicotine and found that they displayed no withdrawal symptoms when given the diabetes drugn.
Metaformin was also found to eliminate anxiety, irritability and other withdrawal symptoms in the rodents.
“Metformin, because of its long-term record of safety and relative lack of side effects, has ‘real potential’ as a smoking cessation aid if clinical trials confirm the findings in mice,” Sangwon Kim, from the varsity..
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death.
Three medicines have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to help people break their addiction to nicotine, but smoking cessation rates remain low — at about 15 per cent — even though some studies say up to 70 per cent of smokers want to quit.
Current therapies include nicotine replacement, an antidepressant and a medication aimed at reducing the cravings for and pleasurable effects of cigarettes, none of which directly treats nicotine withdrawal symptoms, Kim said.
For the new study, published week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team focussed on activating an enzyme known as AMP-activated protein kinase, or AMPK, which — among other roles — stimulates the breakdown of glucose for energy.
The team discovered that the AMPK pathway is activated in mammals following chronic nicotine use, but is repressed during nicotine withdrawal.
They set out to find whether AMPK, stimulated by metformin, could lessen or even eliminate the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.
They found that metformin completely prevented anxious behaviors caused by nicotine withdrawal at doses that had no effect on body weight, food consumption or glucose levels.