As title said why does smoke cause so much damage to the cardiovascular system?
In the last year 3 acquaintances of mine had heart attack of some sort. The doctor said that smoke was the main reason for all 3 of them.
I read most chainsmokers die of heart attack instead of lung cancer but i don’t understand why.
In: Biology
It is one of specific and very harmfull effects of smoking, not an aspect of some general effect.
There substances in tobacco smoke that are adsorbed into blood. Along with psychoactive nicotine, some undesirable substances mix with your blood.
Some of them are chemically active in the way that they change a component of blood called LDL cholesterol, whatever that is. They oxidize it.
When LDL cholesterol is oxidized, it becomes garbage. It is consumed by macrofages. Macrofages are white blood cells that attack cancer cells and other garbage.
Macrofages consume and digest garbage, and eventually die and turn into pus. A dead macrofage with some dozens of cholesterol bits inside is called a foam cell. LDL cholesterol pus is real fatty and foamy.
This pus gets chunky and sticks to the walls of blood vessels. It affects your brain, lungs and other muscles too, but heart’s blood supply is crucial.
You can’t sit on your heart and make it fall asleep. This muscle works hard 24/7 since before you were born.
A pus plaque in one of the vessels feeding heart may block it enough to make heart muscle slowly starve, exhaust itself and start dying.
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