Smoke Alarm
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 When we hear that smoking may be hazardous to our health, we usually think of lung cancer. But smoking also increases the risk of heart attack.
Actually, smoking contributes to the risk of heart attack in at least four distinct ways:
· It's well documented that cigarette smoking can make platelet cells in the blood stick together. Therefore, smoking can start or accelerate the blood-clotting mechanism that leads to heart attack.
· Cigarette smoking produces carbon monoxide. Inhaling carbon monoxide can be an important causative factor in angina heart pain or heart attack.
· Smoking can cause spasm of the coronary arteries. Indeed, in some heart patients, the chest pain caused by smoking is appropriately called "tobacco angina." · Finally, smoking irritates the heart itself, increasing the incidence of abnormal, irregular heartbeats. Such cardiac abnormalities can have serious, if not fatal, consequences.
It's encouraging to note that when a person quits smoking, the risk of heart attack drops immediately! And there's no great mystery why.
Obviously, when you stop smoking, the level of carbon monoxide in the blood diminishes rapidly. So does the potential of coronary artery spasm, heart irritation, etc.
However, it takes a lot longer for an ex-smoker's heart attack risk to drop to the level of a nonsmoker in comparable health. A recent study at Boston University looked at the incidence of heart attack among smokers, ex-smokers and nonsmokers.
Results of the study: Smokers had three times as many heart attacks as nonsmokers. Ex-smokers who had been away from cigarettes for less than two years had twice as many heart attacks as nonsmokers. And there was no significant differences in the number of heart attacks among those who had never smoked and those who quit two or more years ago. In other words, it takes about two years for an ex-smoker's heart attack risks to return to the level of those who have never smoked.
So if you're a smoker, you can decrease your danger of heart attack immediately by giving up cigarettes. And within two years, your statistical risks will be the same as if you'd never smoked in your life. Two years will go by fast if you start by quitting now!
Source: Muscle & Fitness Magazine
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