Nicotine raises your blood pressure by constricting your blood vessels. This occurs because the oxygen in your blood decreases and because nicotine directly stimulates the production of a hormone, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), in the adrenal gland.
Epinephrine raises blood pressure. After tobacco use raises blood pressure, you’re at risk of all the medical consequences of high blood pressure, not to mention diseases associated with smoking, such as mouth and lung cancer.
Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide is considered a lethal gas which is used in some commercial gases. It is also produced from the combustion of petrol. It has an effect on the haemoglobin in our blood.
Carbon monoxide interferes with the process of oxygen which has been breathed in attaching itself to haemoglobin and forming a compound called oxyhaemoglobin which is necessary for the oxygen to be released into the tissues of the heart and other organs.
Carbon monoxide then attaches itself to haemoglobin instead of the oxygen and death can eventually occur because of oxygen starvation.
The Cigarette Smoke
Another way cigarettes have a problematic effect on blood pressure is because the smoke accelerates the advance of atherosclerotic arterial disease much more rapidly and cardiovascular disease occurs much more quickly.
Other problems associated with smoking and high blood pressure can be the effects on the brain. The brain requires high levels of oxygen and if the arteries in the brain are clogged with plaque, atherosclerotic disease advances rapidly with the possibility of clot formation which can lead to a possibility of stroke and death.
The good news is that these same studies have found that if a relatively healthy person was to stop smoking, then within 18 months, over 90% of them would see their predisposition to cardiovascular disease reducing to the same as a person who doesn’t smoke. This is surely a good enough reason to find that extra will power needed to give up the dreaded weed.
There are enough evidence of the dangers of tobacco and enough helpful advice to quit using tobacco that you would have to be really careless not to stop immediately, if not sooner.
Drugs that have caused a small fraction of the illness and death that tobacco can be blamed for have been taken off the market. So why cigarettes are still sold legally and advertised in many of our most prestigious magazines?
The answer to that question lies squarely at the feet of government and the millions of dollars spent on cigarettes that are turned around and used to influence that government.