Smoking just one cigarette can affect your heart - Brief Article

Nutrition Health Review, Fall, 2002

Smoking a single cigarette can significantly and abruptly change the performance of the heart in young adults, a new study shows. The research, released by the American Society of Echocardiography, suggests that nicotine alone is not the trigger for this change in cardiac performance, since researchers did not see similar cardiac responses in participants who simply chewed nicotine gum.

Although physicians have long recognized that nicotine increases heart rate and blood pressure, this research concludes that smoking even one cigarette causes an abrupt change in the performance of the heart's left ventricle while the heart chamber is filling with blood. This change in cardiac function is likely the result of the 4,000 chemicals and 43 carcinogens present in tobacco smoke.

Researchers at the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine (Greenville, North Carolina) studied a group of 27 healthy young individuals with no evidence of organic heart disease immediately before and after smoking one cigarette or chewing nicotine gum for 15 minutes. Using echocardiography (ultrasound of the heart), researchers measured the participants' mitral and pulmonary veins, recording and determining cardiac performance. Echocardiography provides doctors with real-time images of the heart and surrounding blood vessels.

Vincent L. Sorrell, M.D., led the research. "This study shows for the first time that smoking even one cigarette can dramatically and negatively affect the heart's performance. Poor heart performance can cause a significant loss of exercise endurance or tolerance," he said.

Smoking puts people at risk for cardiovascular disease by interfering with the functioning of the endothelium, the layer of cells lining the inside of arteries. Each year in the United States, approximately 53,000 deaths are attributed to cardiovascular disease caused by smoking. Cigarette smoking also nearly doubles the risk of stroke.