Smokers' Habit

Is smoking bad for the heart? Non-smoking wives tell their husbands that it is. Heart specialists, many of them smokers, are not so sure. Last week the Journal of the A.M.A. set out to weigh the evidence.

A few things are agreed: e.g., cigarette smoking usually shrinks the small blood vessels in the hands & feet, sends the blood pressure up, and boosts the pulse rate by five to 20 beats a minute. It is clear that the shrinking of the arteries is caused by nicotine, because denicotinized cigarettes do not produce this result.

While doctors are still not sure that smoking ever causes heart disease, they have seen a number of cases, with symptoms like angina pectoris, that probably resulted from smoking. The strongest cause & effect evidence is in thrombo-angiitis obliterans ("Buerger's disease," from which the late King George VI suffered). This "occurs most frequently among smokers and is severer among those persons who smoke excessively than among those who smoke little."

The Journal's one hard & fast conclusion is that doctors should do much more research into the effect of smoking on the heart and arteries. Meanwhile, it warns, alcohol does not always prevent shrinking of blood vessels in the extremities, so taking a cocktail is no insurance against the effects of smoking.

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