It’s well known that smoking cigarettes negatively affects health, but can it affect blood glucose (blood sugar)? The answer is yes — smoking cigarettes makes it harder to manage diabetes and control blood blood sugar levels. Living with type 1 diabetes requires careful management of blood sugar levels to make sure they stay in a healthy range. In type 1 diabetes, the body doesn’t make enough insulin and needs insulin therapy to manage blood sugar levels.

People who have diabetes and smoke are also at a higher risk of diabetes complications. Continue reading to learn more about how smoking cigarettes affects blood sugar and diabetes management, as well as how you can improve your overall health and health with diabetes if you quit smoking.

Smoking Is a Risk Factor for Insulin Resistance

Insulin resistance is often an issue for people with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, but people with type 1 diabetes can become insulin resistant too. Smoking cigarettes is a risk factor for insulin resistance with type 1 diabetes.

The pancreas makes insulin, a hormone that helps cells absorb sugar needed for energy. People with type 1 diabetes don’t make enough of this hormone and need to take insulin to live. Nicotine, the chemical in cigarettes that makes smoking addictive, changes how cells work in a way that makes them not respond to insulin. The cells build up a tolerance to insulin, so it’s less effective. This is called insulin resistance.

So, for people with type 1 diabetes who smoke, not only does the body not produce enough insulin due to the disease, but insulin resistance caused by smoking makes it harder for the body to respond to insulin therapy.

Blood sugar levels rise when cells can’t absorb sugar from the blood because of insulin resistance. People with insulin resistance need to take more insulin to keep their blood sugar in their target range.

Quitting smoking can help reduce insulin resistance with type 1 diabetes.

Smoking Makes It Harder To Manage Blood Sugar

Smoking when you have diabetes — any type of diabetes — makes the condition harder to manage. Smoking has been linked to poor blood sugar control and more blood sugar variability among people with type 1 diabetes.

For example, one study of people with type 1 diabetes showed that participants who smoked had nearly five times the risk of not achieving glycemic goals compared to those who didn’t smoke. People with type 1 diabetes who smoked were in a state of hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) more often and had more fluctuation in their interstitial glucose, which is used to estimate blood sugar. In addition, the researchers found that the group who smoked had almost twice the risk of severe episodes of low blood sugar than the group who didn’t smoke.

Smoking and Its Effects on Blood Sugar Increase the Risk of Diabetes Complications

Smoking is linked to diabetes complications from having high blood sugar levels over long periods due to insulin resistance. This can cause damage to your heart, eyes, kidneys, and feet.

In addition, smoking itself can make the risk of diabetes complications worse. People with diabetes who smoke are more likely to have serious health problems related to diabetes, including:

• Cardiovascular problems — Smoking causes high cholesterol, which can lead to heart disease, as well as blood vessel damage, which can lead to high blood pressure.
• Circulation problems — Smoking causes blood vessel damage, which can cause poor circulation in the legs and feet and lead to infection, ulcers, and potential amputations.
• Nerve damage — Smoking causes inflammation that can lead to nerve damage.
• Eye problems — Smoking can cause eye damage that may lead to vision loss or even blindness.
• Kidney problems — Smoking makes you more likely to develop kidney problems that can lead to kidney damage and kidney disease.

The combination of high blood sugar due to insulin resistance and the negative effects of smoking can make damage to important parts of the body happen faster. For example, the harmful effects of both high blood sugar levels and cigarette smoking have been shown to speed up damage to the blood vessels among people with diabetes who smoke.

Smoking Causes Overall Negative Health Effects

In addition to making it harder to manage diabetes, smoking cigarettes worsens overall health and harms almost every organ in the body. People who smoke are more likely to develop serious health conditions, such as:

• Lung cancer
• Heart disease
• Stroke

Smoking can cause cancer outside your lungs too. In fact, cancer can develop almost anywhere in the body from smoking.

Smoking can be deadly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S. Furthermore, people with diabetes who smoke have an increased risk of premature death compared to people with diabetes who don’t smoke.

Quitting Smoking Can Improve Health and Diabetes Management

Quitting smoking brings health benefits no matter how old you are, how many cigarettes you’ve smoked, or how long you’ve smoked. Quitting will improve not only your life expectancy but also your quality of life and overall health.

Quitting smoking has additional, even immediate, benefits for people living with diabetes. As soon as you stop, you’ll experience:

• Better use of insulin in you body
• Better control over blood sugar levels
• Faster recovery from surgery
• Easier management of diabetes

Quitting smoking doesn’t reverse the negative effects of smoking on diabetes, but it can help keep your blood glucose stable. For example, research has shown that people with type 1 diabetes who quit smoking have glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels similar to those of people who haven’t smoked. A1c tests give you and your doctor an idea of your blood glucose levels over a period of weeks or months. It’s important to have HbA1c levels in a target range, set by your health care team, because high levels increase the risk of type 1 diabetes complications.

Although the nicotine in nicotine replacement products such as gum, patches, and lozenges may raise blood sugar, these products still can be helpful when you’re ready to stop smoking. Quitting isn’t easy, but it immediately benefits your health and diabetes and makes diabetes management easier. Talk with your doctor about support to quit smoking and other changes you can make to best manage your type 1 diabetes and over health.

Talk With Others Who Understand

On myT1Dteam, the social network for people with type 1 diabetes and their loved ones, more than 3,000 members come together to ask questions, give advice, and share their stories with others who understand life with type 1 diabetes.

Have you had trouble managing diabetes from smoking? What did you need to do to manage your blood sugar? Share your experience in the comments below, or start a conversation by posting on your Activities page.