TOBACCO damages more than just your lungs. Body scans of smokers reveal that a vital enzyme which protects against high blood pressure and heart attacks dips to between a third and a half of its normal level in organs including heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen.
鈥淚f you don鈥檛 have as much monoamine oxidase, you鈥檒l probably soon suffer some major medical catastrophe, such as a heart attack,鈥� says Joanna Fowler of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York state, who led the team that performed the scans. The enzyme prevents raised blood pressure by breaking down certain amino acids, including tyramine, which is found in cheese and red wine (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1833106100).