Smoking and Diabetes both reduce the amount of oxygen reaching your bodily tissues, resulting in poor circulation.

• Smoking raises your blood sugar level making it harder to control your diabetes.
• Of people with diabetes who need amputations, 95% are smokers.
  – Nicotine is a vessel constrictor, reducing the body’s blood flow. Smoking increases cholesterol levels and hardens arteries.
• Diabetes increases cholesterol levels and the levels of some other fats in your blood.
• The combined cardiovascular risks of smoking and diabetes is as high as 14 times those of either smoking or diabetes alone.
• Together, diabetes and tobacco use make it twice as likely that you will develop heart and blood vessel disease.
• People with diabetes who smoke are 3 times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than are other people with diabetes.
• Deaths from heart disease in women with diabetes have increased 23% over the past 30 years compared to a 27% decrease in women without diabetes.