Kick the habit or kick the bucket. Researchers have found that cutting back on the number of cigarettes you smoke does not reduce your risk of heart disease or stroke proportionately. Yes, it lowers the risk but not by much. Researchers at UCL Cancer Institute at University College, London, UK, analysed 141 studies of 12 million people to calculate the risk of heart disease and stroke associated with smoking. These were their startling results, published in the medical journal BMJ: Men who smoked just one cigarette a day, as opposed to 20, did not reduce the risk of cardiopulmonary disease to 5 per cent, as mathematics seems to suggest. The risk was actually 46 per cent for heart disease and 41 per cent for stroke, in relative terms. For women who smoked one cigarette a day, the excess risk for heart disease is 31 per cent and for stroke 34 per cent. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t smoke less; it means you shouldn’t smoke at all.

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Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
May 2018