Smoking and Heart Disease

Cigarette smoking is a major cause of heart attack, stroke and peripheral vascular disease.  Peripheral vascular disease refers to a range of abnormal conditions that affect veins outside the heart, usually causing blockages in the arteries, for example, in the leg where it may lead to gangrene of the foot.

Tobacco use accounts for a large proporition of heart attacks among younger cigarette smokers.

Smoking and heart and blood vessel disease:

• Tobacco smoke contains more that 4,000 chemicals, many of them known poisons
• Nicotine increases blood pressure, which makes the heart work harder, and carbon monoxide makes the heart beat quicker and takes the palce of oxygen in the blood.
• Tar in tobacco contains dozens of chemicals that cause cancer.
• Smoking adds to the artery-clogging process that can lead to heart attack, stroke and peripheral vascular disease.  It oveworks the heart and reduces the oxygen supply, makes clots more likely to form in blood vessels, and increases the risk of potentially fatal changes in the heart beat.
• Smokers have a 70% greater risk of death from heart disease than non-smokers. 

 

Cigarette smoking - the risks explained:

If you smoke you increase your risk of heart attack by three to six times.

 

 

• You increase your risk of heart disease if you are female and take the contraceptive pill.
• You increase your risk of stroke by three times.
• You increase your risk of peripheral arterial disease, which can lead to gangrene, by more than five times.

Passive smoking contributes to disease:

People who inhale smoke from others are also at risk -

• Non smokers living with smokers have about a 25% to 30% increase in risk of heart disease and are also more likely to suffer a stroke.
• Passive smoking is especially risky for children and babies and can cause low birth weight babies, sudden infant death syndrome, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma and middle ear infections.

Quit smoking NOW and improve your health:

• Contact your Doctor or Pharmacist for advice - there are a wide range of smoking cessation aids available which can be of great help.
• Telephone the National Smokers' Quitline on 1850 201 203 - Open everyday from 8am - 10pm.
• Seek support from family and friends