Recent research has revealed that light to moderate smoking can accelerate the risk of women suffering death from a major cardiac-event by up to 8%. The research was conducted by Alberta University, Harvard Medical School and Bringham Women’s Hospital, and published in the journal – Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.
The research used a sample of 101,000 healthy women and collected information from them twice a year, since 1976. By the time the follow-up stage had been reached, 351 women had died from sudden cardiac-death.
Within the study, the researchers categorised light to moderate smokers as those who smoke between one and fourteen cigarettes a day, and the main findings concluded that light-to-moderate smokers were twice as likely to die from a heart-related episode compared to those who did not have a habit. It also concluded that healthy women who smoke have experienced no previous types of chronic illness such as stroke or cancer are two-and-a half times more likely to experience sudden death from a cardiac-event, and that women with heart disease who stop have the same risk as a non-smoker within 15-20 years of quitting.
Sudden cardiac death is the main cause of heart-related fatalities in the United States, and claims between 300,000 and 400,000 deaths annually. Experts from the US based, Mayo Clinic have estimated that heart-attack survivors are most vulnerable to sudden death during the first 30 days after being released from hospital.
However, despite its prevalence, there are steps you can take to safeguard against it:
Ensuring you are physically active and getting lot of exercise is a good start, as well as retaining a sensible body-weight and eating a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole-grains, green-leaves fish and nuts. Although in the end, one of the critical factors in sudden cardiac death is whether you smoke or not, and in order to maintain health and wellbeing – it is best avoided.
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