SMOKING

[sumeet]

Hi,
This is to ask u all about smoking.
Earlier before diabetes I used to smoke m10 cig. a day minimum.
But now I smoke 1 cig. a day.
is ithis okey or i should reduce it to 1 cig. a week.

But plz don't tell me to leave it.

Regards
Sumeet

[JDRF-Team-sgg]

Although I am not a physician, I have done some research on your question and offer two web sites here which give you some facts about how smoking affects your diabetes. I fear that I must warn you that it doesn't look good for diabetic smokers. For type 1 diabetics, the most dangerous factors seem to be that smoking causes your actual glucose levels to rise, and that smoking increases damage to your blood vessels, and make it much more likely for you to develop neuropathy and/or retinopathy.

http://www.state.in.us/isdh/programs/diabetes/nosmoke.htm

http://medweb.bham.ac.uk/easdec/prevention/smoking_and_diabetes.htm

Below, I have copied some exerpts from yet another web site which makes some fairly strong associations between smoking and kidney, eye, and nerve disease in diabetics. Read on:

"Nephropathy (kidney disease) has been shown to be common in Type 1 diabetic patients who smoke and smoking increases the risk of albuminuria in both types of diabetes. (Albuminuria refers to the presence of protein  in the urine and can indicate signs of kidney disease.)  Another small study of 33 people with type 2 diabetes with kidney disease found that smokers’ kidney function declined more rapidly than that of non-smokers, despite drug treatment, suggesting that smoking cessation could slow the progression of kidney disease in people with diabetes who use ACE inhibitors.
 
The relationship between cigarette smoking and retinothapy (disorders of the retina) is less well defined than that of other microvascular complications of diabetes. However, some studies have found an association between smoking and diabetic retinopathy.
   
Smoking is also a documented risk factor for both the development and progression of various types of neuropathy (damage to the peripheral nervous system).  A retrospective case control study of type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients found that current or ex-smokers were significantly more likely to have neuropathy than individuals who never smoked (64.8% vs. 42.8%). A more recent prospective study found that cigarette smoking was associated with a 2-fold increase in risk."

All in all, it seems that the case is well made here that smoking is dangerous for diabetics. Obviously, if you absolutely cannot quit altogether, then the less you smoke, the better for you. I thought it interesting that even after quitting, smoking seem to increase the risk of retinopathy. I hate to be a bearer of ill tidings, but it seems that there are risks beyond what normal healthy people risk. Take a look at the web sites I have listed and then at least you can make an educated decision. The decision is of course, yours. But do be educated about how your decision affects your body.