Women Smokers Have A Higher Risk Of Strokes

Women smokers are more likely to have strokes.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – It has been already many years since scientists found a direct link between smoking and strokes, but it seems that women smokers are more vulnerable than men.

When a bleeding occurs inside the lining of the brain, it means that person just had a stroke and as recent research has shown, strokes are more common among women smokers than men.

Strokes are also known as subarachnoid hemorrhages. Women smoking over a pack of cigarettes every day are eight times more likely to have a stroke compared with people who don’t smoke.

Also, men who smoke over a pack a day are three times more likely to have a stroke. But women who smoke less still have many reasons to worry because it was discovered that light smoking among women triples the risk of subarachnoid hemorrhages.

According to Dr. Joni Lindbohm, lead researcher, neurosurgery and public health specialist from the University of Helsinki, smoking has no safe level so your best bet would always be to avoid it.

Lindbohm stressed that policymakers should come up with a better plan to reduce smoking among the general population, because by doing so, they will also lessen the risk of strokes.

According to Dr. Ralph Sacco, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine chairperson of neurology, subarachnoid hemorrhages make up for 3 percent of all strokes.

Younger people are usually the ones who are the most affected by these strokes because one in five individuals who have a stroke die. The others have an increased risk of other complications such as long-term disabilities.

These strokes generally occur due to a bleeding aneurysm, which is a small, weak spot in a brain blood vessel that can burst.

Lindbohm and his team gathered information from around 66,000 adults who participated in other Finnish national surveys starting from 1972. These people were monitored for around 21 years until 2011, until they died, or until they suffered a first stroke.

Based on the results, among light smokers who smoked one to ten cigarettes every day men were two times more likely to suffer a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and women were three times more likely to have a one compared with people who did not smoke.

Among participants who smoked between 11 to 20 cigarettes a day, men were twice more likely to have a stroke, and women were four times more likely to suffer one compared with nonsmokers.

When some smokers quit, their risk of strokes significantly dropped off and after six months the risk was reduced to the level of people who did not smoke.

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Melissa Gansler

Melissa calls herself Poet, essayist, and naturalist. Graduated from the University of Michigan, Melissa holds a degree in Literature. Besides English, she can also speak Chinese, German, French.