How Smoking and Diabetes Create a Deadly Combination?
It is not uncommon to see posters saying, “smoking causes lung cancer”. But, an unknown fact is that along with other diseases, smoking also increases the risk to develop diabetes.
Did you know? Smokers have 30%-40% more chances of developing diabetes than a non-smoker.
Can smoking cause diabetes?
Smoking is bad for everyone. Worse if you have diabetes. Nicotine present in cigarettes causes blood vessels to lose their ability to maintain their shape. It makes your blood vessels fragile and eventually, hard.
This causes difficulty in providing essential nutrients to body organs. and hence, this leads to the development of various diseases. It can harm nearly every organ of our body. Smoking is proven to be an independent risk factor for diabetes, heart diseases, lung diseases, and commonly heard- cancer.
Does smoking increase blood sugar?
Attention smokers! Smoking makes our body more resistant to insulin.
This means that the insulin present in our body won’t be able to act on our cells, and hence, glucose will remain in the blood causing high blood sugar levels. So yes, smoking increases blood sugar.
Moreover, even if you have type I or type II diabetes, insulin taken in form of injections (type I) and produced by the pancreas in the body (type II) will stay in the blood along with sugar, causing high blood sugar levels in type I and type II diabetes, both.
What else smoking and diabetes cause?
Together the deadly combination of high blood sugar and smoking dramatically speeds up the long term complications arising out of diabetes
1. Retinopathy
Diabetic Retinopathy is a form of diabetes complication where blood vessels present in our eyes get damaged due to high blood sugar levels.
This causes leakage of blood in our retina and causes symptoms such as blurred vision, spotty vision, and in the case of severely uncontrolled long term diabetes, blindness.
2. Neuropathy
Diabetes Neuropathy is the most common diabetes complication where nerves present in our body gets damaged due to high blood sugar levels. This causes nerves to produce different sensations and we mostly experience, burning sensations, tingling sensations, and pain in legs.
3. Nephropathy
Diabetes Nephropathy is another complication of diabetes. With high blood sugar levels, kidneys experience difficulty in filtering blood and in the long term, cause leakage of proteins in urine, and kidney damage.
4. Ulcers and infections
When we develop ulcers and infections, our body’s immune system fights harder and heal them but in case of high blood sugar levels, the immune system isn’t able to work as effectively and blood sugar provides bacteria with a favorable environment to grow even more and hence, infections spread easily.
Do you Know? People often think that there are some safer forms of tobacco. Hookah and cigar being the most popular alternatives. This isn’t true! There is no safe way to smoke! Replacing cigarette with a cigar or hookah won’t help us avoid health hazards. They are equally injurious to health.
If you don’t smoke, never make a plan to start and if you do smoke, challenge yourself to quit smoking.
How to quit smoking?
Make a Quit Plan
Take it as a major project and be confident, focused and motivated. Tell your close friends and family for motivation.
Write down your reasons to quit and read them every day. You may have difficulty to quit on a single date but no worries, make a gradual quitting plan. Start with reducing the consumption of cigarettes slowly, until you eventually quit.
Choose a Quitting Strategy
Quitting all at once works for some people while for others gradually cutting down the number of cigarettes per day works.
Using a nicotine patch, gum, inhaler or spray or prescription medicines may help. If it is still difficult, please ask your healthcare manager/ doctor to suggest a counsellor.
Stay Busy
Trying keeping ourselves busy in other activities that keep our mind off smoking and distract from cravings will be a help. Spend time with family, non-smoking friends, and pets.
Drink lots of water, go to a movie or dinner. Chew basil (tulsi) leaves whenever you crave smoking. Have dinner, and hangouts at places where smoking isn’t allowed.
No single approach works for everyone so don’t lose hope and be honest with your needs.
Manage diabetes at home and prevent its complications. Download Zyla app (http://bit.ly/2BftxyE-defeatingdiabetes) to get continuous and personalised care for diabetes.
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