How Smoking Affects Both The Risk Of Diabetes & Diabetes Complications

Today, smoking is widely recognized as a serious health risk. However, the association between smoking and lung cancer or other forms of lung disease remains the strongest. Most people fail to recognize that smoking is also a major risk factor for a wide range of lifestyle diseases and chronic conditions, including heart disease and diabetes. Understanding how smoking affects your diabetes risk and also increases the risk of diabetic complications is important as this highlights the need for smoking cessation as a prerequisite to the effective prevention or management of diabetes. 

Smoking And Diabetes Risk

Smoking has been found to increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as 40 percent and the risk level is closely related to the amount that you smoke. Smokers who consume more cigarettes a day, therefore, have an even higher risk of diabetes. 

Smoking is a significant risk factor for the development of diabetes because of its effects on the body, which include increased and chronic inflammation, as well as oxidative stress that results from exposure to toxic chemicals that are produced from cigarette smoke. 

High levels of nicotine also have a direct impact on insulin sensitivity, making it harder for smokers to control blood sugar levels effectively. Additionally, smokers tend to be more vulnerable to abdominal obesity or accumulation of belly fat. This is another major risk factor for diabetes as abdominal fat is associated with increased cortisol production and reduced insulin sensitivity.

Smoking And Diabetes Complications

Smoking is bad enough for individuals who are otherwise healthy, but it’s even worse when you suffer from diabetes. Diabetes affects almost every organ of the body, increasing the risk of various complications. Similarly, smoking has far-reaching health effects and the combination of smoking with diabetes can be lethal. 

Managing diabetes is much harder when you smoke as nicotine reduces the effectiveness of various diabetes medications, including insulin. Smokers, therefore, need higher doses of insulin, but still face a higher risk of complications, such as:

Cardiovascular Disease: Heart disease is actually the leading cause of death in diabetes patients and smoking increases the risk significantly as chronic inflammation increases damage to the blood vessels. Smoking also causes plaque formation in the arteries, which can lead to blockages or blood clots, resulting in heart attacks, heart failure, or stroke. 

Kidney Disease: Diabetes is known to cause damage to the kidneys over time and smoking is also an independent risk factor for kidney disease. The combination of smoking with diabetes makes you more vulnerable to chronic kidney disease and kidney failure. 

Vision Loss: Smoking is known to affect ocular tissues, affecting the eye mainly through ischemic or oxidative mechanisms, increasing the risk of both cataract and macular degeneration. It can also increase the risk of diabetic retinopathy in diabetes patients, which can eventually lead to vision loss. 

Peripheral Neuropathy: One of the most threatening complications of diabetes is peripheral neuropathy, which involves nerve and blood vessel damage in the feet and legs. This can even lead to amputation in some cases. When combined with smoking the risk of peripheral neuropathy is much higher as smoking causes further damage to the blood vessels. 

Quitting smoking can significantly lower your risk of diabetes, while it will also help to lower the risk of diabetes complications. In fact, the risk of diabetes and many other complications continues to decrease each successive year after quitting smoking. 

References:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK179276/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK179276.pdf
• https://dmsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13098-019-0482-2
• https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/50th-anniversary/pdfs/fs_smoking_diabetes_508.pdf
• https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/health-effects-tobacco-use/cigarette-smoking-risk-factor-type-2-diabetes
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9635902/
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdi.12952