British scientists: harmful even one cigarette a day
To reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, smokers should completely quit and not just reduce the number of cigarettes smoked. To such conclusion came a new study in the British medical journal BMJ.
People who smoke even just one cigarette a day, still have 50% more chance of getting heart problems and 30% increase chance to get a stroke than those who never smoked.
According to scientists, for these diseases there is no “safe level” of Smoking. However, according to doctors, smokers who reduce the number of cigarettes smoked, are more likely to leave forever.
Good news and bad news
That is cardiovascular disease, not cancer, are smokers the most dangerous and responsible for 48% of premature deaths caused by Smoking.
Scientists came to the conclusion that, although the overall percentage of smokers in the adult population of Britain year after year falls, the amount of people who smoke one to five cigarettes per day continues to grow.
Analysis of 141 studies published in BMJ, showed that the habit to smoke 20 cigarettes a day will result in an average of seven heart attacks in a group of 100 people of middle age.
But even if they drastically reduce the number of cigarettes smoked to just one a day, it will still cause a heart attack in three.
Doctors say that men who smoke even one cigarette a day, risking coronary failure increased by 48% (which, in turn, can lead to heart attack) and the risk of stroke by a quarter compared with those who never smoked.
In women these figures are even higher: 57% increases the risk of heart attack and 31% of stroke.
Professor Allan Hackshaw of the cancer Institute at University College London, who led the study, said bi-Bi-si: “Now in some countries it has become a trend, when smokers reduce the number of cigarettes smoked, thinking that they’re fine, actually it is, if we have in mind only the cancer. But for these two cardiac diseases that they can get more likely than cancer, it doesn’t work. It is necessary to quit Smoking completely”.
As scientists believed, it is logical to assume that the reduction in cigarettes smoked will lead to a proportional reduction caused harm to the body, and this assumption is confirmed by a number of studies in the field of lung cancer.
However, the study found that men who smoke only one cigarette a day, the risk of developing heart disease by as much as 46% higher than that of daily smokers in a bundle, and the risk of stroke is higher by 41%.
For women in a similar situation, the risk was 31% and 34% higher, respectively.