Does smoking increase or decrease pressure? This is an important question, and it is recommended that everyone who picks up another cigarette get the answer.
A lethal dose of nicotine is smoking about 94 cigarettes. Among the vacationers in Nice, a competition was held for the maximum number of cigarettes that a person can smoke. The winner was promised an impressive cash prize. Two people won with a score of 60 cigarettes each. Unfortunately, they did not receive the award, since both had passed away.
How tobacco was revered
Nicotine addiction is the most widespread habit that regularly harms smokers and the people around them. In ancient times, it was believed that tobacco has healing and analgesic properties, and the inhalation of smoke helps to communicate with the gods.
Smoking was an important ritual in religious rites, it was considered an integral part of political and military negotiations. Having deeply respected tobacco, people used to hardly think about the issue of whether smoking increases or decreases pressure.
Columbus discovered America ...
Centuries later, when the Spanish navigator Christopher Columbus discovered America, tobacco became widespread around the world. At first it was tried by the inhabitants of Spain, then the Portuguese and the rest of Europeans. Initially, smoking was perceived negatively: Europeans who were addicted to tobacco were accused of being connected with the devil, in Chile tobacco lovers threatened to be walled up in the wall, in England they brought smokers with a noose around their necks along the city streets, thereby exposing everyone to ridicule. In Turkey, the death penalty relied on the distribution of tobacco and its smoking. In Russia smokers tore nostrils, staged demonstrative flogging, sent to Siberia. The "green light" for smokers was lit in 1812 with the advent of the first workshops that produced smoking tobacco.
Why does a person smoke?
Today, smoking is a habit of a huge part of the world's inhabitants. Some people smoke because this process relaxes them and gives them pleasure. Others are thus distracted from anxiety and nervous tension. Still others smoke just for company. In their opinion, it is easier to communicate and establish contacts, and if there is no topic for conversation, you can just smoke silently. For most of them, smoking has become an obligatory ritual, without which it is impossible to fall asleep, calm down or, conversely, cheer up. And it is unlikely that smokers, when they inhale another portion of tobacco smoke, think that smoking increases or lowers blood pressure.
Is a cigarette relaxing?
In fact, a cigarette does not bring relaxation to a person, does not relieve tension and fatigue. It neither helps to cheer up, nor to concentrate. A smoker becomes dependent on nicotine - a psychotropic substance that acts deceptively in the first minutes, causing a decrease in the activity of brain cells, the onset of a state of peace, some calm. Then there is a sharp jump in brain activity, the vessels narrow sharply, their elasticity decreases.
This causes great harm to health and triggers negative, sometimes irreversible, processes in the body . Some time later, there is a desire to repeat the already experienced moments of bliss and again cloud the mind with tobacco smoke. What happens to the body at this time? Does smoking increase or decrease pressure in a person?
To answer this question, you need to understand what blood pressure depends on. These are 3 main components: vascular tone, blood volume and its viscosity. Heart rate should also be considered. Which of these factors affects nicotine? This alkaloid has a significant effect on vascular tone: momentary (occurring instantly after smoking a cigarette) and distant.
What happens to pressure?
Since nicotine-responsive receptors are found throughout the bloodstream, vasoconstriction and, consequently, increase in pressure occur immediately after smoking. It is a mistake to think that after smoking a cigarette the pressure decreases. In fact, a short-term improvement in well-being after a nicotine dose occurs due to the formation of endorphins (hormones of joy) and other active elements as a positive response to the satisfaction of an obsessive desire. Still, does smoking increase or decrease pressure?
In addition to nicotine, vascular tone is significantly affected by the additives found in cigarettes. Especially dangerous is menthol, which dilates blood vessels. That is, when smoking an aromatic cigarette, the opposite effect occurs simultaneously (narrowing and expansion of blood vessels), causing even greater damage to health.
Ahead of hypertension?
Trying to understand the question of whether smoking increases or decreases pressure, we can conclude that it increases. At first, this happens short-term, since the body quickly neutralizes the effect that occurs after smoking a cigarette by using reserve forces. But with each pack smoked, the smoker is getting closer to the development of hypertension, which is a key factor in strokes and heart attacks. Such conditions are considered a critical point, after which a fatal outcome is very likely.
Or atherosclerosis?
Smoking is one of the main causes of the development of atherosclerosis (a vascular disease in which plaques form on their walls).
The longer the smoking history, the stronger the vessels are deformed, the narrower the lumen of the bloodstream, the higher the blood pressure. Doubts about whether smoking raises or lowers blood pressure are unnecessary. The answer is obvious: it increases, and this carries a huge danger to human health.
Does smoking pressure increase or decrease?
If smoking is combined with the wrong lifestyle, there is a high probability of damage to the vessels that feed the myocardium - the muscle middle layer of the heart, which is the main part of its mass. As a result, the development of coronary heart disease occurs, and in the future - a heart attack.
Does smoking increase or decrease pressure? It rises, and inscriptions on packs of cigarettes shout about it, bills restricting tobacco advertising are introduced, and the popularization of a healthy lifestyle is unfolding.
In vain, some smokers believe that if the disease is already present, then quitting smoking does not make sense.
The disease resulting from such a bad habit is proof of the harmful effects of nicotine on the body, a signal of the need to reconsider one's life position and motivate oneself to save oneself.