Effects of smoking on blood pressure

In this blood pressure experiments, I used a home blood pressure monitor (upper arm cuff), to measure my blood pressure before, during and after smoking a large cigar. I took readings every 5 minutes or so, to see if smoking would cause changes to my blood pressure.

Incidentally, I am not a doctor. These experiments are for my own curiosity, and I do not recommend you do the same.

Here are my results:

Here is the chart of this data:

While the graph may not look too impressive, you can see a large jump in blood pressure almost immediately. Before starting to smoke the cigar, the average blood pressure for the three preceding readings was 133/83. The first reading after starting to smoke was 149/92. That’s quite a jump.

The initial increase in blood pressure is spectacularly quick. Not surprising really, as smoke enters our bodies through the thin membranes of the lungs, as well as through the membranes in our mouth. This is why smokers can get a neat instant “hit” when they light up.

Blood pressure is raised for about 20 minutes before it returns back down to a more normal reading (that’s normal for me). When there is a stimulus to increase blood pressure, our bodies are going to try to combat that increase and lower the blood pressure. In this case it took about 20 minutes for my body to do so. Blood pressure then remained fairly constant for the remainder of the experiment.

It would be interesting to see how blood pressure would be affected if I continued to smoke all day (as in a chain smoker), and whether my body could compensate over a long period of time. I wont, however, be doing that experiment ;o)

Look out for new experiments soon. You’ll find them in the left hand menu.

Blood pressure variations during the day

In this first of many blood pressure experiments, I used a home blood pressure monitor (upper arm cuff), to measure my blood pressure during my waking day.

The readings were not taken at specific intervals, and I have made no attempt to show on this graph when I ate food, did exercise, drank coffee, or anything else that might affect blood pressure. The whole point of this experiment was just to see how my blood pressure varied throughout the day.

Here are my results:

Average Blood pressure over the day: 129/82

Here is the chart of this data:

The fluctuations were not as big as I anticipated, but one thing I have noticed is that my blood pressure does tend to reduce as the evening progresses.

We have to be careful to draw any conclusions from this blood pressure data, but clearly, there is some variation during the day.

I will be looking at specific influences in other experiments, and how they affect my blood pressure, so look out for those. They will be listed down the left of this page.