Association between smoking status and cardiovascular and cortisol stress responsivity in healthy young men

Abstract

Acutely, cigarette smoking stimulates increases in blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and cortisol, but little evidence is available concerning the impact of habitual smoking status on cardiovascular stress responsivity. This relation was assessed in 86 healthy male firefighters, age 19 to 31. comprising 52 nonsmokers and 34 smokers. Measures of BP, HR, salivary free cortisol, breathing pattern, and self-reported stress and alertness were obtained while subjects performed nonverbal mental arithmetic and a socially evaluative speech task. Systolic and diastolic BP were higher at rest in nonsmokers than smokers, and a consistent difference in stress responsivity was also found. BP, HR, and cortisol responses to mental arithmetic were significantly smaller in smokers than nonsmokers, with mean changes in BP (adjusted for body weight) averaging 19.3/11.0 mmHg and 28.5/15.4 mmHg in smokers and nonsmokers, respectively. There were no effects of smoking status on task performance or subjective stress responses and no differences between groups in family health history, health-related behaviors, o r psychological characteristics that might account for the reactivity difference. Possible explanations of the results are discussed, and methodological implications for cardiovascular stress reactivity studies are outlined.

Preliminary evidence that exercise dependence is associated with blunted cardiac and cortisol reactions to acute psychological stress

“…This is the first evidence we know of that a non substance dependency is associated with blunted stress reactivity. However, our findings are very much in line with those from previous research showing that smokers are characterised by relatively blunted cardiovascular (Girdler et al, 1997;Phillips et al, 2009;Roy et al, 1994;Sheffield et al, 1997;Straneva et al, 2000) and cortisol (al'Absi et al, 2003;Kirschbaum et al, 1993Kirschbaum et al, , 1994Rohleder and Kirschbaum, 2006) reactivity. They also resonate with the findings from studies linking alcoholism (Lovallo et al, 2000;Panknin et al, 2002) and risk of alcohol dependence (Sorocco et al, 2006) with blunted cardiovascular and cortisol reactivity.…”

“…There is emerging evidence that low or blunted cardiovascular or cortisol reactivity is characteristic of those with substance dependencies and may indeed be a general marker for risk of addiction (Lovallo, 2006). Habitual smokers, for example, have been found to show diminished salivary and plasma cortisol (al'Absi et al, 2003;Kirschbaum et al, 1993Kirschbaum et al, , 1994Rohleder and Kirschbaum, 2006) and cardiovascular (Girdler et al, 1997;Phillips et al, 2009;Roy et al, 1994;Sheffield et al, 1997;Straneva et al, 2000) reactions to acute psychological stress. It is unlikely that these effects reflect temporary abstinence during stress testing and its effects on stress task engagement (Roy et al, 1994).…”

“…Habitual smokers, for example, have been found to show diminished salivary and plasma cortisol (al'Absi et al, 2003;Kirschbaum et al, 1993Kirschbaum et al, , 1994Rohleder and Kirschbaum, 2006) and cardiovascular (Girdler et al, 1997;Phillips et al, 2009;Roy et al, 1994;Sheffield et al, 1997;Straneva et al, 2000) reactions to acute psychological stress. It is unlikely that these effects reflect temporary abstinence during stress testing and its effects on stress task engagement (Roy et al, 1994). Blunted cardiovascular reactivity has been observed in female smokers regardless of whether they were wearing a nicotine replacement patch or not (Girdler et al, 1997).…”

Disordered eating behaviour is associated with blunted cortisol and cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress

“…Blunted cortisol and cardiovascular reactivity is characteristic of those with substance dependencies and may indeed be a general marker for risk of addiction (Lovallo, 2006). For example, habitual smokers have been found to show diminished salivary and plasma cortisol reactivity (Kirschbaum et al, 1993Al'Absi et al, 2003;Rohleder and Kirschbaum, 2006) and cardiovascular reactions (Girdler et al, 1997;Roy et al, 1994;Phillips et al, 2009b), to a range of acute stress tasks, not attributable to temporary abstinence during a stress testing session (Girdler et al, 1997). Those addicted to alcohol have also been found to exhibit blunted cortisol and cardiovascular stress reactivity (Lovallo et al, 2000;Panknin et al, 2002), as have the offspring of alcoholic parents (Moss et al, 1999;Sorocco et al, 2006), suggesting that blunted reactivity may actually predict addiction and signal future risk of addiction.…”

Cigarette smoking and myocardial infarction in young men and women: A case-control study

“…It is also worth noting that most of these studies involved middle-aged subjects while the effect of smoking on a young adult population has not been adequately studied. Some previous studies have emphasized the importance of smoking as a risk factor in young coronary patients [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. It is believed that cigarette smoking is more frequent among young compared with older coronary patients, however, there are very few scientific evidences that relate smoking with cardiovascular risk among young people.…”