“Once in a While” Smoke Chokes Blood Flow

When it comes to eating, one can get away with “cheating.” While all of us, ideally, would eat healthfully and from organic sources 100 percent of the time, it’s really not realistic. I realize that. Thus, it’s OK – every once in a while – to have foods that don’t symbolize the quintessence of well-being.

But “every once in a while” doesn’t apply to cigarettes. Not according to me, or a group of researchers, who say that what occasional smokers don’t realize is that just one cigarette during their lunch break – or that one cigarette in a moment of weakness – has serious effects on arterial blood flow.

Researchers from the University of Georgia recruited, appropriately enough, 18 Georgia Bulldogs (college students, not actual bulldogs) for their study, half of whom smoked “occasionally” and not at all for at least two days prior to the testing date (occasional=less than a pack a week). The other nine were all non-smokers.

The aim of the study was to see how well blood was flowing through the participants’ arteries. To determine this, they analyzed their flow-mediated dilation (something I’ve written about in past articles), which basically measures just how much blood is flowing through a certain artery. Researchers gauged their FMD by using a sphygmanometer – what’s used to measure blood pressure –pumping up the cuff so the participants’ normal blood flow would be impacted by the restriction of the pumped-up cuff. They did this for both the non-smokers and the occasional smokers to get a baseline identification for how the arteries in the forearm responded to increases and decreases in blood flow after keeping the cuff pumped up for extended periods of time (no more than 10 minutes).

Once they got all their numbers, they did a second run through of this, only this time they asked the occasional smokers to smoke two cigarettes just prior to the second run through.

As one might expect, the non-smokers saw little to no difference in the rate in which blood flow coursed through the arteries of the forearm. The same could not be said for the occasional smokers, though. Not only was the arterial function worse in the occasional smokers group compared to the non-smoking group in the first test, but the occasional smokers’ arterial responsiveness dropped an additional 24 percent after the second test.

At this point, the researchers can’t be certain if this impaired arterial function is a short term thing or a long term issue. If it’s a long term issue, this is cause for serious concern, because decreased blood flow means increased risk for stroke and heart attack.

As the researchers say, this study was done on young people – a time in life where people are usually in their prime physical condition. If this study proves representative for the greater population, imagine what kind of impact the occasional smoke has on older smokers?

As I said, one can get away with the occasional guilty food pleasure without any serious health issues, short or long term (the emphasis on occasional). But as this study indicates, that rule just doesn’t apply to smoking.