Smoking Two Cigarettes Daily Doubles Heart Disease Risk, Study Finds
A new study reveals that smoking just two to five cigarettes a day can double the risk of heart disease and increase the risk of death by 60%. Complete cessation is the only way to reverse the damage.
The study, published in PLOS Medicine, was conducted by the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center. The research analyzed data from 22 long-term health studies involving more than 320,000 adults. The findings challenge the long-held belief that smoking less means less harm, revealing that even light smoking causes significant cardiovascular damage.
Current smokers had more than double the risk of dying from any cause compared to people who never smoked. Those who smoked just two to five cigarettes a day had double the chance of developing heart disease. The study also found that health risks ‘immediately decrease’ after someone stops smoking, with substantial improvements within 10 years and a significant reduction in risk after about 20 years. However, the study notes that the damage takes a long time to fully fade.
Researchers emphasize that only complete cessation can reverse the damage caused by smoking. The study suggests that lower-intensity smoking is associated with cardiovascular risk and that the primary health message for current smokers should be early cessation rather than reducing the amount of smoking. The authors note that self-reported data may affect the accuracy of smoking habits, and they did not include data on e-cigarettes or other tobacco products in their analysis.
Experts recommend that quitting smoking greatly reduces smoking-related health risks, but it may take 30 years or more for health risks among former smokers to be on par with people who never smoked. The study aims to raise awareness about the dangers of smoking, even in small quantities, and the importance of quitting entirely for better health outcomes.