Atheer – External Sources
Smoking just one cigarette per day is far more harmful than previously expected, with researchers suggesting that the risk of heart disease and stroke compared with smoming twenty a day is only halved.
According to Science Daily, researchers say that their findings have important consequences for many smokers and health professionals who believe that smoking only a few cigarettes carries little or no harm. They argue that smokers should stop completely, rather than merely cut down, to significantly reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke.
A team of researchers led by Professor Allan Hackshaw at the UCL Cancer Institute at University College London, analysed the results of 141 studies and estimated the relative risks for smoking one, five, or twenty cigarettes per day.
They found that men who smoked one cigarette per day had 46 percent of the excess risk of heart disease and 41 percent of the excess risk of stroke associated with smoking twenty cigarettes per day.
For women, those who smoked one cigarette per day had 31 percent of the excess risk of heart disease and 34 percent of the excess risk of stroke associated with smoking twenty cigarettes per day.
“We have shown that a large proportion of the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke comes from smoking only a couple of cigarettes each day,” said the researchers.
“No safe level of smoking exists for cardiovascular disease. Smokers should quit instead of cutting down, using appropriate cessation aids if needed to significantly reduce their risk of these two common major disorders.”
Cardiovascular disease, not cancer, is the greatest mortality risk for smoking, causing about 48 percent of smoking-related premature deaths.
