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.