Published at 01 June, 2026 13:36.
British Heart Week aims to raise awareness about looking after our heart health and what we can do to help prevent heart conditions such as cardiovascular disease, which can lead to having angina, heart attacks, and strokes. Over 8million people in the UK live with cardiovascular disease.
Every day your amazing heart beats approximately 100,000 times, pumping 8 litres of oxygen rich blood around your body through arteries and veins and helps keep your organs and muscles working correctly. There are many risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease and the more risk factors you have, the higher the risk such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking and some other factors such as family history, diabetes and your age.
The older you are, the more likely you are to get cardiovascular disease. Men are more likely to develop it earlier than women. More help and information and facts about the heart and heart disease and what is being done to help prevent it can be found here: https://www.bhf.org.uk
Smoking harms organs in our body, particularly our heart and blood vessels and our arteries become sticky and clogged from chemicals in cigarette smoke and can lead toa heart attack as blood cannot flow properly through our bodies.
Oxygen to your body is reduced and blocked arteries put you at more risk of blood clots and stroke. Quitting smoking is one of the most effective ways to protect your heart and lower the risk of getting heart problems. Within just 20 minutes of stopping smoking your heart rate reduces and your blood pressure reduces and begins to return to normal. Oxygen in your blood returns to normal after 8 hours of quitting. Blood flow is improved, reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Even if you have already been diagnosed with a heart condition quitting smoking can help any treatments be more effective and help you manage it better. Longer term, after 6 months of quitting your risk of heart attack is greatly reduced and after 1 year your risk of heart attack halves compared to a smoker's and after 15 years your risk of heart attack falls to the same as someone who has never smoked!
For many people heart disease is preventable. Love your amazing heart and lessen your risk.
Written by Carrie Whitworth, Yorkshire Smokefree Wakefield
