What if to start the year off right, you quit smoking today? The earlier you stop smoking, the more you reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease linked to cigarettes.
This is one of the resolutions taken by many smokers at the beginning of each year: to put out their cigarettes for good and never light a new one again. If you, too, have often made this pious wish but have never managed to honor it, here is perhaps the study that could convince you to quit smoking for good.
According to new work, presented last November at the 2018 American Heart Association session, the earlier a smoker quits smoking, the better their chances of regaining their cardiovascular health.
Cardiovascular risk reduced by 38%
Previous studies had already concluded that the cardiovascular risk decreases just a few years after quitting smoking. But they were based on only a small number of participants and did not follow them over time to analyze the long-term effects of their smoking.
This new work, led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, goes further: by following 8,700 participants for 27 years, it provides insight into how quickly cardiovascular health returns to normal after stopping exercise. smoking, but also to anticipate how health deteriorates as smoking continues.
At the start of the study, none of the 8,700 participants had any signs of cardiovascular disease, but over the 27 years of follow-up, 2,386 cardiovascular events were recorded.
The researchers then compared the cardiovascular health of current smokers, former smokers and non-smokers. Many parameters were taken into account, including level of education, sex, age, decade of birth, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol level, alcohol consumption and index body mass (BMI).
The results showed that 70% of cardiovascular events occurred in those who smoked or smoked the equivalent of 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years. Compared to those who continued to smoke, people who quit in the last 5 years reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 38%.
The results also showed that it took around 16 years from the last cigarette for the risk of cardiovascular disease to return to the same level as that of someone who had never smoked. This duration is much longer than the estimates of previous studies.
For Meredith Meredith Duncan, a student at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and author of the study, “these results underscore the benefits of quitting smoking within five years, which represents a 38% lower risk of heart attack, stroke or other forms of cardiovascular disease risk compared to people who continue to smoke.”
According to her, as difficult as it is to quit smoking, these results clearly show that it is better to quit smoking as soon as possible. “At the end of the day, if you smoke, now is a great time to quit,” she concludes.
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