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Smoking impacts people’s health in a variety of negative ways; cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and advanced aging are just a few of the common smoking-related problems.
One particularly detrimental aspect of inhaling tobacco smoke is an increase in LDL or bad cholesterol. Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between good cholesterol, bad cholesterol and smoking in order to underscore the importance of quitting smoking.
Cholesterol is a waxy fat that the body produces to build cells, protect sensitive nerves and even synthesize hormones. There is both good and bad cholesterol, and too much bad cholesterol can be dangerous.
Bad cholesterol, or LDL, is problematic because it enters the blood stream and causes plaque to build up in the veins and arteries. This is because the waxy cholesterol substance cannot be dissolved in the blood. Over time, this build up of plaque can lead to heart disease and heart attack.
Good cholesterol, or HDL, is the inverse of LDL. It protects against the build-up of plaque and it lowers the risk of heart disease and heart attack.
Smoking cigarettes both increases LDL levels and decreases HDL levels. Thus, tobacco inhalation leads to increased rates of heart disease and an increased risk of heart attack. In fact, research demonstrates that these risks increase by nearly 50% for people who smoke cigarettes on a regular basis.
So how specifically does smoking lower HDL and raise LDL levels? First, the toxins released into the lungs by cigarette smoke are often absorbed by the bloodstream. One of these toxins, acrolein, disturbs the body’s ability to process cholesterol, in this case causing the body to produce much lower levels of HDL. Since HDL balances LDL, the body then produces too much of the bad cholesterol type and this leads to the heart and circulatory consequences listed above.
Knowing that smoking cigarettes directly causes an increase in bad cholesterol and its progeny heart disease and heart attack should be a compelling reason for any smoker to quit smoking. Just as people who engage in unhealthy eating habits that increase bad cholesterol need to cut out junk foods, smokers also need to cut out tobacco.
Smoking is a psychosocial habit that can be overcome with strength of willpower and a shift in mental thought processes and attitudes. There are a variety of ways to get in the quit smoking mindset, but one method that has proven to be particularly helpful is quit smoking hypnosis. Quit smoking hypnosis enlists the services of a professional hypnotherapist to help people take advantage of the brain’s ability to create new and healthy habits based on a mind over matter attitude. Quit smoking hypnosis puts the power to kick the tobacco habit back into the individual’s hands, thus delivering them back into a state of body balance and health.