Smoking does more than make you smell like smoke and stain your teeth. It has significant effects on your health, including your risk of developing heart disease. Learn more about the effects of smoking by reading this guide.

Consequences of Smoking

Smoking introduces toxic chemicals to your bloodstream that damage the heart and respiratory system. It increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke, blood clots, and aneurysms. It also causes atherosclerosis—a buildup of plaque in your arteries that contributes to high blood pressure. These medical conditions cause chest pain, arrhythmia, and heart failure and contribute to numerous other life-threatening heart, lung, and arterial diseases.

Effects of Quitting Smoking

If you quit smoking, your risk for heart attacks and cardiovascular death decreases by 50% or more. Your risk of other associated cardiovascular events decreases the longer you stop, too. Within the first year of ceasing to smoke, you’ll experience a significantly reduced risk of heart disease and noticeably improved lung function and circulation. As extra benefits, your sense of taste and smell will improve, you’ll have less phlegm in your lungs, and you’ll enjoy clearer skin.

Tips to Help You Quit

Develop a personalized stop-smoking plan that combines multiple approaches to quitting. Your plan should include medicinal assistance with quitting (supplemental nicotine, for example), stress reduction, counseling, and support from family, friends, and a quit-smoking group. You should assess habits and situations that lead you to smoke and change or avoid them. If you don’t succeed at first, realize that slipups are common. Quitting is possible with persistence and help from others.

If you’re concerned about smoking’s effects on your risk for heart disease, see an experienced cardiologist for a workup. The team at Premier Cardiology Consultants has provided the residents of Dothan, Andalusia, Ozark, and Enterprise, AL, with comprehensive cardiovascular diagnostics and treatments for over 25 years. To view the list of conditions they address, including high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, blood clots, and aneurysms, visit them online, or call (334) 699-6396 to schedule an appointment.