Hi guys! In this video, I'm going to discuss how smoking tobacco smoke, as well as vaping,
can delay your recovery from sports injuries. So, for those of you who
don't know me, my name is Maryke. I'm one of the physiotherapists from sports-injury-physio.com,
where you can get online physiotherapy assessment as well as treatment for your injuries. So,
have a look at the Description of this video if you want a link to our website.
Okay, so people tend to think that vaping is relatively harmless compared to tobacco smoke.
But when it comes to injury recovery and healing wounds and stuff like that, it's not actually
true. If your vape liquid has nicotine in it, then that can actually delay your healing as well. So,
let me explain why. So, let's talk about nicotine first, because that's usually found in both
tobacco smoke as well as vaping, and then I'll talk about the rest of the things that tobacco
smoke does. So, with nicotine, the main effect that it does there, that it has on healing is,
it delays it, because it reduces blood flow to the area. Now remember, blood flow is really
important, because we need oxygen to produce more cells and to heal. We need nutrients,
we need to take … get rid of the debris of the injury. And all of that can just happen if you've
got a sufficient blood flow there. Now, nicotine decreases blood flow in two ways. It first of all
gets … it makes the blood vessels constrict more – so, vasoconstriction – and it affects the little
or the small blood vessels more than the big ones. And if it constricts it, the blood flow reduces,
and it means that you're going to get less oxygen, less nutrients through that area.
But now, at the same time it also makes your platelets more sticky. So,
the platelets stick to each other, makes the blood thicker, and guess what? That can't go
through those tiny little blood vessels as well, especially now that they’re slightly constricted.
So, nicotine on its own already reduces blood flow and delays healing in that way.
Now, if we think of tobacco smoke, that has more than
four thousand different toxins in it, and two of the toxins … We don't know what each one of those
does to the body specifically … but two of them they've researched more. And the one is carbon
monoxide and the other one hydrogen cyanide. And both of them further reduce oxygen supply to the
injury site. The carbon monoxide specifically is extremely good at binding to the red blood cells.
Now, if the carbon monoxide is binding to a red blood cell, then the oxygen can't, which means
that now, instead of having oxygen in your blood, you've got three, four carbon monoxides in there,
which isn't good for the injury, and just one little oxygen guy going ... floating with it. So,
that's a really important thing for injury healing again if you can't get oxygen there.
Then, another way that they affect it is that they affect the number of white blood cells in your
blood. Now, white blood cells are really important for their inflammatory effect.
Now, you may think, “Well why am I bothered about inflammation? I thought inflammation is
bad for injuries and we want to get rid of it.” Well, no, not actually. When you have an injury,
we need an inflammatory response for that first one to five days so that you can get rid of
all the damaged cells and everything like that. And if it's an open wound, you want to get rid
of any bacteria that could get into that, otherwise you can get infections from that.
So, if you don't have a proper inflammatory response, you can actually then affect how
well your injury heals after that, because we know from research on anti-inflammatory medications,
if you suppress the anti-inflammatory response that way, it affects the quality of the healing
later on. Okay, so then we get to the one that I'm really interested in, and that's actually really
scary. Tobacco smoke – and they're not sure which one of the compounds causes this mostly or whether
it's a combination of all the components in there – but tobacco smoke really affects your collagen
turnover in your body. Now, collagen is one of the main building blocks for all the structures
in the body. Some structures, like your tendons and your ligaments, are mainly made up of collagen. So,
your tendons are 80% made up of collagen, whereas other structures like bones use a collagen
scaffold for the minerals to go and attach to. So, you can see that
every part of the body uses some collagen to some extent. Now, people who smoke, their collagen
turnover is suppressed. So, that means that … Let's not even think of injury at this stage,
just regular day-to-day. Remember we're forever creating new cells in our bodies, because
some cells are just old, some cells have weakened a bit, some cells have damage through normal use.
So, they've got to be replaced the whole time. Now, if you can't create new
collagen that readily, it means that you can't replenish the cells in your body that quickly.
And that's why tobacco smoke has actually been linked with things like degenerative disc
disease in the spinal cord; there's a direct link between that. And there's strong evidence
to suggest that people who smoke tobacco smoke over a long period of time are a lot more prone
to get discs that prematurely degenerate in their backs. So, that's really important. But then, if
we think of injury healing. Say for instance, you've got a tendinopathy in one of your tendons,
and now you're smoking tobacco smoke. So, to get that tendon to heal, you need to create
new strong collagen fibres, but if you're smoking, you can't. So, that injury is just going to
drag on, it's not going to heal. So, that's a really important part to remember about that.
Now, yes of course, in an ideal world nobody would smoke, because it would be really easy,
and we'll all be healthy. But to be honest, tobacco smoke and nicotine are highly addictive,
and that's why it's not that easy to give it up. So, there may be ways that you can help
yourself if you don't want … or you just find you can't give it up totally. So, even reducing
the number of cigarettes or things you have in a day or maybe switching from tobacco smoke
to vaping that only has nicotine in it, or bubble gum, that you at least take some of the negative
effect out of it. But have a chat with your GP. There are so many services around and so
many different things that you can you do these days to help you reduce how often you smoke or
help you leave it or stop smoking totally. So, if you're struggling to do it on your own,
find some help. Usually it's highly subsidised by the government as well,
because it has … everybody benefits if people stop to smoke. So, let me know if you've got
any questions. But remember, if you need any help with any injuries, you're welcome to consult one
of us via video call. The link to the website is in the Description of this video. Take care!