Why smoking tobacco is bad for your lungs and health?
I know smoking tobacco is bad for my lungs and health, but why is smoking bad for my heart? ELEVATED HEART RATE AND BLOOD PRESSURE There are two especially harmful substances inhaled while smoking. The first is nicotine, the addictive ingredient in cigarettes. When it enters the bloodstream it increases the heart rate, causing the heart to work harder and increasing the need for oxygen in all the cells of the body. Research suggests that nicotine contributes to arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats). Smokers’ risk of sudden cardiac death is about three times that of nonsmokers’. Nicotine is blamed for elevations in blood pressure while the cigarette is being smoked, which means that a moderate smoker might cause his or her blood vessels to constrict and relax at a rate twenty or so times higher than usual a day. Researchers don’t know exactly how this affects the body over time, but they suspect it is damaging. They do know that when people already have high blood pressure, ...