How Tobacco Can Harm Your Heart
How using cigars, pipes, or smokeless tobacco can harm your heart.
The data on the health effects from smoking cigarettes has been clear for decades. Today, tobacco use causes nearly 1 in 5 deaths each year in the U.S. While many of these deaths are cancer-related, researchers have found that people who smoke are more likely to die from heart disease than lung cancer.
While cigarette smoking rates have plummeted from nearly 50% of adults in the 1960s to just under 12% in 2022, people use other tobacco products at about the same rate as they always have. While graphic new warning labels will soon help remind people of the dangers of cigarettes, no such labels are required for non-cigarette products.
Summary of article:
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 estimates that among U.S. adults:
- 3.5% smoked cigars
- 0.9% report pipe and/or hookah use
- 2.1% used smokeless tobacco products such as snuff or dip
How tobacco products affect cardiovascular health.
When it comes to the health of your heart and blood vessels, tobacco products can cause major problems. When you smoke or dip, nicotine and other harmful chemicals enter your bloodstream where they begin to cause damage and inflammation. This damage can lead to the development of atherosclerosis, when plaque builds up inside your arteries.
Nicotine, the highly addictive substance found in most tobacco products and in many e-cigarettes, can cause several cardiovascular problems, including:
- Hardening and narrowing of arteries
- Increased blood pressure
- Increased heart rate
After standardizing data from the cohort of studies, the authors identified an increased risk of specific heart and blood vessel conditions associated with each type of tobacco product:
- Use of cigars increased the risk of:
- Stroke
- Atrial fibrillation
- Heart failure
- Smokeless tobacco led to a higher risk of:
- Myocardial infarction (heart attack)
- Death from coronary heart disease
- Pipe use was associated with a higher risk of:
- Heart failure
Changing how we talk about tobacco:
While I always talk with my patients about the dangers of cigarette smoking, we often don’t discuss whether they dip or smoke a pipe or cigars.
Article by:
Dr. Amit Khera M.D.
Director, Preventative Cardiology, Chief of Cardiology, Clinical Operations
