Smoking and inflammation

"When you smoke a cigarette, over a thousand chemicals enter your body, many of them irritants that get into the bloodstream, triggering an inflammatory response," says William Joel Meggs, M.D., Ph. D., author of The Inflammation Cure (McGrawHill, 2004).

Smoking is especially inflammatory to an artery's endothelium, its interior lining. Because each cigarette adds new damage, the blood vessels never have time to heal, making them magnets for fatty plaque. Quitting the habit immediately reduces inflammation and eventually reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease back to levels for nonsmokers.

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