How does smoking affect my heart?

How does smoking affect my heart?

Rose Marie Robertson, MD, FAHA, FACC, FESC (Chief Science Officer and Past President of the Board of American Heart Association) gives expert video advice on: How is alcohol abuse related to heart conditions?; Is red wine good for my heart?; What is the "French paradox"? and more...

Smoking as an activity causes more deaths in this country then any other. It causes more deaths then accidents or suicides or homicides. Nearly 45,000 people a year die because they smoked. So certainly we don't want to have people smoke. We don't want children to start smoking. We'd like people not be exposed to second hand or environmental tobacco smoke because smoking has affects on the heart and blood vessels in many different ways. Exposure to smoke makes the lining of the blood vessels not work so well. So it's function to keep blood flowing smoothly along and not stopping to clot is diminished by smoking. Smoking makes platelets, the blood cells that are in blood that helps us form clots, more likely to stick together. So on both sides of the equation you're much more likely to form clots, our blood vessels are more likely to be constricted and those are the effects we can easily see. Of course because cigarettes and tobacco is not regulated by the FDA, things can be put into cigarettes that are in fact harmful in ways we don't even know about. Things like ammonia and cyanide, things we would consider poisonous in any other circumstance can be put in cigarettes and there's no regulation of it at all. So the American Heart Association feels strongly and advocates strongly for the FDA to have regulatory power over tobacco, an important drug that is taken by many people in this country. So that the FDA could prevent some of this adulteration of what is already a harmful substance, but in addition we advise people who have heart disease to certainly not smoke and talk with their doctor about the many ways in which we can help them quit smoking. Many, many people have quit, others can, and we can help them do it.