What Role Can Quitting Smoking Plays In Lowering Your Cholesterol Levels?

Even smokers will admit that smoking is not a healthy habit

, but many people do not realize that the effects of smoking extend beyond the lungs. According to the American Heart Association, more than one-half of all smoking-related deaths are due to cardiovascular disease.

In fact, there are more smoking-related deaths each year due to cardiovascular disease than to cancer. People are aware, however, of the connection between high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, so it is not surprising that many smokers with high cholesterol want to know what role quitting smoking plays in lowering cholesterol levels.

How Smoking Affects Cholesterol Levels

To understand the role that quitting smoking plays in lowering cholesterol, you first have to understand how smoking affects cholesterol levels. Changes in cholesterol levels increase as the number of cigarettes smoked increases, although as few as four cigarettes each day can have a negative effect on cholesterol levels.

- Carbon monoxide, a byproduct of tobacco smoke, elevates bad cholesterol levels.

- The chemicals in tobacco smoke cause the body to develop free radicals. Free radicals lower your immune system, and they cause bad cholesterol, or LDL, to become oxidized. Oxidized LDL is believed to be the cause of atherosclerosis. The chemicals also cause atherosclerotic plaque to grow at a faster rate once it begins to form.

- Smoking causes blood vessels to narrow, and causes the artery walls to stiffen. As a result, smokers are more likely to have cholesterol plaque break loose from the artery walls and form a clot in the blood vessel.

- Tobacco smoke lowers good cholesterol levels, further preventing the bad cholesterol from being flushed through the blood vessels.

How Quitting Smoking Affects Cholesterol

Obviously, quitting smoking will remove the carbon monoxide and free radicals being absorbed from the tobacco smoke. That alone will help curb the development and build-up of atherosclerotic plaque. In addition, levels of bad cholesterol will not continue to increase and good cholesterol will not continue to decrease.

Over time, the levels of bad cholesterol will begin to decrease while the levels of good cholesterol will begin to increase.

Of course, the next question would be how long it takes to see a difference. Various studies have been conducted for both quitting smoking and reducing smoking by half to see how it affects cholesterol levels. Participants often see a change of about 10% in their good and bad cholesterol levels within eight weeks.

One year after quitting smoking, the risk of cardiovascular disease is reduced by half.

Smoking plays a large role in high cholesterol levels, and those who have high cholesterol and smoke are at an even greater risk for cardiovascular disease than those who have only high cholesterol.

As a result, smokers will find that quitting smoking plays a large role in significantly reducing bad cholesterol levels, as well as in significantly raising good cholesterol levels in a short amount of time.

by: Stuart Brown

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