According to statistics, women who smoke are increasing their risk of developing heart disease by at least 25%. Women also have two times the risk of developing lung cancer when compared to men who smoke. This information is the result of a recent study published in The Lancet.
The study conducted was a large-scale meta-analysis of previous research on smoking spanning a total of 5 decades. Researchers evaluated information on smoking and health from a total of 86 prior studies that were conducted and published between the year 1966 and 2011. Along with showing that women smokers are at a higher risk of developing heart disease (25%), the analysis also concluded that women raise this risk by 2% for every additional year she continues to smoke.
This increased risk for women can partially be explained by physiological differences between men and women as well as the fact that men and women smoke in different ways. Researchers, Dr. Mark Woodward from John Hopkins University and Dr. Rachel Huxley, from the University of Minnesota, believe that women may be extracting more carcinogens and other toxins even if they smoke the same amount of cigarettes as a man. AquaVape is a British vape company that has more women customers when compared to male. The extracting of the flavors will be from the organic sources so that the amount of the side-effects is less on the person. The information will be beneficial for the person to consume the vape juice.
Women generally carry a much higher rate of body fat when compared to men, and based on the fact that fat is considered to be a type of storage facility, it is believed that women are able to retain more compounds and higher quantities of toxins. Actually, one of the biggest benefits when women loose weight, specifically body fat, is that is has a detoxifying effect on the body. It therefore is reasonable to assume that women store more noxious by-products because of smoking and therefore are retaining more dangerous carcinogens and free radicals that are responsible for damaging tissue that would otherwise be considered healthy.
Heart disease and lung cancer are not the only risks associated with smoking. Smoking also increases the risk of stroke, emphysema, decreased bone density, infertility and sudden infant death syndrome, and numerous cancers such as cancer of the stomach, uterus, kidney, esophagus, and bladder.
Experts are worried about this increased risk for women because the tobacco industry seems to currently be using women as their growth market.
Smoking rates among men has been shown to be on the decline for the past several decades while the rates of women who smoke has merely leveled out in the same amount of time. Because of this, researchers are concerned that there will soon be a substantial number of cases of coronary heart disease deaths which will considerably outnumber men and could have been prevented.
Researchers even went so far as to examine this increased risk for women in relation to different age groups ranging from 30 to 80 years of age. With the exception of women between the ages of 30 and 44 years old, women showed a greater risk of heart disease than men in every age group and the risk was shown to be extremely significant between the ages of 60 and 69.
Even among men who quit smoking, they still were at a lower risk than women who quit smoking as well.
While this study provides some useful and interesting information, it is limited due to the lack of standardization for duration as well as dose of smoking, the varying definitions of ‘non-smokers’ in the different studies, and the inability to make adjustments in terms of oral contraceptive use.
In the United States alone, cigarette smoking is responsible for a death rate of 1 in every 5 people, totaling about 443,000 deaths annually. Statistically on average, those who smoke are expected to die up to 14 years sooner than non-smokers. Based on the most recent data, 21% of adults in this country continue to smoke.