World Diabetes Day: Smoking and your heart

Published at 14 November, 2018.

World Diabetes Day is a great time to raise awareness about the dangers of smoking on your heart if you're a diabetic.

Did you know that both smoking and diabetes increase your risk of heart disease? As you can imagine, when combined, they put a huge amount of pressure on your heart and massively increase your chances of suffering a heart related condition such as a heart attack or stroke. 

High levels of glucose in the blood and smoking damage the walls of the arteries, causing fatty deposits to build up meaning your heart is working much harder to circulate blood around your body. When this happens to the artereies that supply the heart muscle with blood and oxygen, a heart attack can occur. 

Similar to this, a stroke is when not enough blood is getting to the brain. Anything that limits blood flow, such as fatty deposits, increases your risk of having a stroke.

The good news is that stopping smoking reduces the risk of developing a major diabetes-related complication, including cardiovascular disease.

Yorkshire Smokefree can help you give up smoking for good. For more information, or to find your local stop smoking clinic, give us a call today on 0800 612 0011 (free from landlines) or 0330 660 1166 (free from most mobiles). You can also enter your details here and one of our stop smoking advisers will give you a callback at a time that suits you.