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Drugs and the Heart.
By Dr. Colin Alert
Family physician and former medical director of the Heart
Foundation
Most people don’t think of alcohol or
cigarettes as drugs, these can have devastating consequences on
the heart. Marijuana and cocaine are drugs, and these can also
have devastating consequences on the heart.
Smoking cigarettes and the heart.
Inhaling smoke of any kind is dangerous;
increasingly the evidence suggests that not only the smoker is
affected. Smoking is a filthy way of getting a drug (chemical)
into the body. There are many pollutants and carcinogens in
cigarette smoke- the American Heart Association notes that there
are 4000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, and no less than 40 of
them are carcinogens (cancer causing drugs).
Cigarette smoking increases the risk of
heart disease; smoking cigarettes still causes 10 times more
heart disease than it causes cancer. People who smoke have an
increased level of atherosclerosis in their coronary arteries
(the blood vessels which nourish the heart). Atherosclerosis is
the build-up of fatty material - called atheroma - which can
cause the inside lining of the artery to rupture, leading to a
clot.
If a clot forms in a narrowed coronary
artery, the artery can get blocked suddenly. This means part of
the heart muscle loses its supply of blood and oxygen, resulting
in part of the heart muscle being damaged. This is a heart
attack, also known as a myocardial infarction - myocardium
refers to the heart muscle and infarction refers to the death of
a part of it.
A heart attack can cause severe chest pain,
but other symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea,
heaviness or tightness in the chest, stomach, arms, shoulder or
jaw. Some heart attacks only cause a small amount of damage to
heart muscle. In these cases, people can recover quite quickly.
However, if a large part of the muscle gets damaged, it may
limit the heart's pumping efficiency permanently and may result
in death.
When smoking acts with other factors, like
hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol, it greatly
increases the risk for a heart attack and/or other heart
problems.
Alcohol and the heart.
Over the past few decades, many studies have
been published in medical journals showing that moderate
drinking of alcohol may be associated with reduced mortality due
to heart disease in some populations. Some researchers have
suggested that the benefits may be due to the components in red
wine, such as flavenoids and other antioxidants. The linkage
reported in many of these studies may be due to other lifestyle
factors, rather than alcohol. These factors may include
increased physical activity, and a diet high in fruits and
vegetables, and lower in saturated fats.
But it is also known that, over time,
drinking more than three drinks a day can lead to high blood
pressure, heart failure, alcoholic cardiomyopathy (enlarged and
weakened heart), cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Current medical recommendations caution
people not to start drinking, if they do not already drink. If
you do drink, do so in moderation. This means an average of two
or less drinks per day for men, and one or less drinks daily for
women.
(A drink is 12 oz beer, 4 oz wine, 1.5 oz of 80-proof spirits,
or 1 oz of 100-proof spirits).
Cocaine and the Heart.
Cocaine is certainly considered by everyone
as a drug, and most people who die from cocaine use are killed
by the drug’s effects on the heart. There are several
complications associated with cocaine use. These include
myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), endocarditis
(inflammation of the inner lining of the heart), cardiomyopathy,
myocardial infarction, and fatal and non- fatal arrhythmias
(irregularities of the heart beat).
Some of these potentially fatal
complications can occur in a first-time cocaine user.
Smoking crack cocaine, which is very potent,
can lead to heart attacks (and strokes) in younger people, who
are not normally at risk for heart problems.
Older people are at even greater risk
because they are more likely to have diseased arteries.
It is clear that cocaine is one of the most
dangerous illegal drugs in common use.
Marijuana and the Heart.
Marijuana use can increase the heart rate as
much as 50 percent, thus making the heart work a lot harder. It
can cause chest pain in people who have a poor blood supply to
the heart - and it can produce these effects more rapidly than
tobacco smoking.
Marijuana causes very much some of the same
effects as cocaine and cigarettes, but perhaps the effects on
the heart are less potent than cocaine.
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