How smoking affects feet

I wrote a post a couple of days ago about I completing a half marathon walking, instead of running. I received many questions from people (other smokers) about connection between smoking at feet. Most people know that smoking affects lungs and may be heart, but they have never heard about smoking affecting feet. Here is what I have come to realize.

The feet are as it is too far away from the heart and they don’t receive as much blood circulation as other parts of the body. Many people suffer from a condition called “Peripheral Arterial Disease”, PAD. In this condition, plaque builds in arteries that run the length of your legs to your feet. This results in narrowed arteries and hence lower blood supply to your feet.

The risk of developing PAD is as much as four times higher in smokers than in non smokers.

Many times, doctors can look at the patients feet and tell if the patient is a smoker. The skin on smokers feet can be shinier, thinner and reddish. There can be discoloured patches on the skin.

With the reduced blood flow to the feet, the calf muscles don’t get enough oxygen. Due to this, the calf muscles get stiff and cramped. This particularly happens when you stress the muscles, e.g. while walking fast or running. The only option then is to rest the muscles. Once they are rested and enough oxygen is received, they come back to normalcy. This condition is called intermittent claudication.

I have been thru this. It is painful and many things that you could do without any problem before like running, or climbing or any other things that put stress on calf become difficult to do if not impossible. There are cases when the PAD may even lead to gangrene and subsequent amputation of the leg.

I know that each smoker thinks that he is special and these things will not affect him or her. My request to all of them is, why take risk? Is it really worth it?

Please think before you light up!

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