All smokers take note: new research has shown that those successfully quit smoking for a sustained period of 15 years, can massively decrease the chance of suffering with heart failure or even dying.
U.S. Scientists made the remarkable discovery that people who stopped
smoking almost two decades previously, had a comparable risk to those
that had never smoked before.
Despite the findings clearly being a
positive for all smokers across the globe, heavier smokers – i.e. those
that had gone through at least a packet of cigarettes each day for 32
years or more – still had a slightly increased risk of health problems.
However, lead researcher Dr Ali Ahmed, from the Washington DC VA
Medical Center, is pretty clear with the message…people either need to
cut down on their smoking, stop smoking as early as they can, or simply
never start smoking.
He commented: “While all individuals who quit smoking will benefit
from a decreased chance of death, to achieve the full complement of
health benefits of smoking cessation of one who has never smoked,
smokers need to smoke less and quit early, and for those are not smokers
– never start smoking.”
The findings were extracted via the most recent data from the
Cardiovascular Health Study, which comprised of 2,556 people that had
claimed to never smoked, 629 present smokers and 1,297 previous smokers.
Every participant in the study was aged 65 or over, and 312 of the
previous smokers admitted to heavy cigarette usage – smoking at least
one pack daily for 32 years or more.
After a 13 year follow-up evaluation, the proportion of never smokers
and previous smokers who had suffered heart failure, was found to be
21% in both groups. Within the group of former smokers that had consumed
one pack per day for at least 32 years, nearly 30% suffered heart
failure.
Comparison of mortality risks among present smokers and heavy smokers
to never smokers was an interesting find. Researchers accounted for
factors such as age, sex, race, education, other health conditions and
medications, discovering that present smokers were around twice more
likely to die from other diseases in comparison to those that had never
smoked, and previous smokers were found to be 26% more likely to die
compared to the never smokers.
Dr Ahmed told Reuters: “When one smokes, it induces atherosclerosis,
or the buildup of plaque in the arteries. However, when one quits
smoking, the buildup of plaque and risk of blood of clots decreases,
allowing one’s cardiovascular risk to return to normal over time.”
Atherosclerosis is the medical term used when a person’s arteries
have become narrower and harderned, usually caused by a high level of
‘bad’ low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
Statins like atorvastatin (Lipitor) and rosuvastatin (Crestor)
are currently taken by around 7 million people in Britain, and work to
decrease rates of LDL cholesterol by reducing the production of LDL
cholesterol inside the liver. It is dangerous to have high rates of LDL
cholesterol as this causes the atherosclerosis, resulting in a higher
risk of heart attack, stroke and coronary heart disease.
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