Smoking has a great impact on hypertension. After smoking a cigarette, the heart rate of hypertensive patients will increase about 5-20 times per minute, and systolic blood pressure will also increase about 10-25mmHg. Long term and heavy smoking, that is, smoking 30-40 cigarettes a day, can cause continuous contraction of small arteries.
Smoking is particularly obvious for human blood pressure at night, and long-term smoking will significantly increase blood pressure at night. Elevated blood pressure at night will cause left ventricular hypertrophy, so smoking not only affects blood pressure but also leads to heart problems. Why does smoking raise blood pressure? This is because tobacco contains a lot of harmful substances, such as nicotine. Nicotine can stimulate the central nerve and sympathetic nerve, and also stimulate the adrenal gland to release a large amount of catecholamine, which can accelerate the heart rate, constrict the blood vessels, and increase blood pressure.
A study of nearly 5000 people who were followed up for 14.5 years found that the hypertension of middle-aged and elderly people who had smoked for a long time and had smoked was 1.15 and 1.08 times higher than that of non-smoking middle-aged and elderly people, respectively. Of course, this proportion is not too high, so this study believes that smoking is a moderate risk factor for hypertension.
In addition, there are also data showing that patients with hypertension who have the habit of smoking, due to the reduced sensitivity to antihypertensive drugs, antihypertensive treatment is not easy to obtain satisfactory efficacy, and even have to increase the dosage.
It can be seen that smoking has a great impact on hypertension.
Therefore, those who have a habit of smoking especially for patients with hypertension are advised to give up this bad habit in time.
If you don't think smoking is harmful to your health, you can measure your blood pressure with your home use blood pressure monitors after smoking to prove your opinion.