Smoking One Cigarette Every 12 Hours Impacts Immunity and Well-Being, Scientists Find
Scientists have found that smoking one cigarette every 12 hours leads to a decrease in the ability to resist infections and immunity in the vascular mucosa and a deterioration in well-being in general.
New Method Reveals Harmful Effects of Smoking
The press service of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science notes that scientists from the Institute of Automation and Control of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed by Alexei Kamchilin, have developed a new method for monitoring the lining of the walls of vessels and lymph. Using this method has been shown to be harmful for smoking even one cigarette every 12 hours.
Impact on Vascular Tone
According to scientists, vascular tension is an important indicator of normal blood flow and the body’s ability to control blood pressure. One of the methods for assessing vascular tone is to check the response of their endothelium to local heating. The methods currently used are either not sensitive enough or cause pain when used.
New Imaging Technique Reveals Decreased Endothelial Function
But a new imaging technique has been used to compare blood vessel tension. In tests, the researchers found that smoking about one cigarette every 12 hours resulted in a decrease in endothelial anti-inflammatory and immune functions and a deterioration in overall well-being.
And during the tests, it became clear to the researchers that the gradual heating of a small area of the patient’s forearm skin to a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius with a specially designed device using a video camera to record an image of the area under study in green light in combination with an electrocardiogram recording, which allows recording the frequency spectrum of oscillations blood flow, including five activity bands: cardiac (0.86-1.36 Hz), respiratory (0.21-0.35 Hz), muscle (0.07-0.12 Hz), neurogenic (0.023-0.046 Hz) and endothelial (0.007-0.017 Hz). An analysis of recent dates revealed significant differences in the level of variability between non-smokers and smokers. It turned out that endothelial fluctuations during local heating in smokers were 40% lower than in non-smokers.
Says researcher Natalya Podolyan: “We have proven that smoking about one cigarette every 12 hours reduces the production of nitric oxide. As a result, the function of the endothelium is reduced, which undoubtedly affects the blood flow in the microvessels of the distal regions, as well as the condition of the heart and blood vessels, which leads to a deterioration in overall health.
These results can be used for non-invasive assessment of other cardiac risk factors (arterial hypertension, impaired glucose tolerance, high cholesterol, obesity, etc.), which can speed up the diagnosis of diseases and the appointment of appropriate treatment.
Source: TASS
