Cancer Articles (Dr. S.N White)

It’s never too late to lower your risk of heart disease. The risk of heart disease rapidly decreases once you stop smoking. In the first twenty four hours after quitting, your blood pressure and pulse return to normal, as do the oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in your blood. This alone relieves some of the extra stress you have been imposing on your heart. Within three months after quitting, you will experience a sharpening of the senses of taste and smell. Your circulation will be improved and your lungs may work at up to 30 percent greater capacity. After a year, your risk of CHD will be about halfway between a smoker’s and a nonsmoker’s. Abnormality of blood clotting due to a higher level of fibrinogen (a component of blood that makes blood clotting, possible) and platelets (particles in the blood that by aggregation make the clots possible) related to smoking will disappear, but it takes longer to undo the damage to the arteries. If your smoking has contributed to plaque de...

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, ...

How can you say that smoking causes heart disease and stroke?   If you ask smokers, nonsmokers, or ex-smokers what they think are the consequences of smoking, no one will hesitate to mention lung cancer, emphysema, chronic coughing, and other respiratory problems. Only a few will mention heart disease. Smoking not only is a major risk factor for lung cancer and emphysema but also doubles an individual’s likelihood of developing heart disease. Smokers with heart disease are up to 70 percent more likely to die of heart disease than are nonsmokers. The heart disease risk increases in relation to the number of cigarettes smoked each day. Individuals who smoke up to 14 cigarettes a day are approximately twice as likely to develop heart disease as those who don’t smoke. Those who smoke 15 to 24 cigarettes a day are about four times as likely, and those who smoke more than 25 cigarettes a day are six times as likely to develop heart disease. These statistics, added to the risk statis...

No. A stroke means you have had damage to a part of the brain caused either by bleeding from a brain artery or from a blockage of a brain artery. Since it involves arteries, a stroke is an example of the vascular group of cardiovascular diseases. Strokes cause about 160,000 deaths per year, or one every 3.3 minutes about one fourth as many as are caused by coronary artery disease. What causes strokes?  About two thirds of strokes are due to atherosclerotic plaques in the arteries of the brain (the cerebral arteries) which close down an artery by more than half and cause a blood clot to form that blocks the artery completely this is what is known as a cerebral thrombosis. There are three main cerebral arteries: the anterior, middle, and postenor cerebral arteries. Blockages due to clots occur in these major arteries or in their smaller branches. Strokes can also be caused by bleeding from a tear in the brain’s arteries these are called hemorrhagic strokes and are particularly co...

Heart attacks and stroke usually cause chest pain lasting more than ten minutes. They may also cause an abnormally rapid heartbeat, sweating, and, if severe, a loss of the heart’s pumping action leading to shock. Some milder heart attacks can occur without symptoms, and some may cause symptoms that are experienced as “indigestion” or a full feeling in the upper part of the abdomen.