gethealthy

I’m sure by now, most people know that smoking can lead to deadly  and serious illnesses.  Despite all the information on the dangers of smoking rates are once again on the rise for adolescents and young adults.

This rise in smokers should prompt you to share information from a recent article by Dr. S. Kenfield and co-workers from Harvard School of Public Health.  A study examined more than 12,000 women who died and who were being watched in the National Nurses’ Health Study.

With the female nurses, those who smoked had an increased risk of dying from any cause that was 281% higher than the risk is in non-smokers. It is assumed that the results are the same for men.

However, if cancers that are known to smoking are examined (lung cancer, bladder cancer, cervix, esophagus, kidney, tongue, mouth, throat, pancreas, stomach, and some forms of acute leukemia), the risk for smokers was 725% higher compared to those who do not smoke.  Even in cancers that were thought to be unrelated to smoking the risk for smokers was 158% higher than that those who abstain from smoking.It also concluded that women who started smoking earlier in life had an increased death rate and had a higher rate of death associated with respiratory diseases like pneumonia and emphysema.

In light of all this information, women who stopped smoking rapidly declined their risk of dying due to cardiovascular disease.  Unfortunately the death rate related to respiratory disease and cancer took 20 years to decrease to the levels of a non-smoker.