Postmenopausal Women Who Quit Smoking Lower Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Smoking just isn't good for you. Period.

And since the late 50s--when insiders of tobacco corporations started leaking evidence that cigarettes can cause cancer--health experts warned against health risks associated with them.

Some listened. And unfortunately, some didn't. And they're still practicing the habit today.

Fortunately, a new study shows that for postmenopausal women who are chucking the habit, they're also significantly reducing their risk of heart disease and diabetes as well

According to Juhua Luo, an epidemiologist at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, she found that women who gained more than 5 kilograms or 11 pounds after they quit smoking still saw their risk for cardiovascular disease drop. However, the study results show that their risk didn't drop as much as for those who gained less than 11 pounds, according to the majority of study participants.

"Our study found that if you quit smoking, even for older women, the benefits start pretty quickly, within years," said Luo, according to a press release, the assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health. "It's never too late to benefit from quitting smoking."

The study examined data for 104,391 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79 who participated in the National Institute of Health-funded Women's Health Initiative. Findings show the following, courtesy of the release:

• Among women without diabetes, women who quit smoking within the past three years had a 26 percent lower risk of developing heart disease compared with women who continued smoking. Women who had quit smoking for more than three years had a 61 percent lower risk. Among women with diabetes, those who quit smoking had about a 60 percent lower risk for heart disease, regardless of how recently they had quit.
• The majority of women in the study gained less than 11 pounds after they quit smoking and saw the same general drop in their heart disease risk as stated above.
• The smaller number of women who gained more than 11 pounds had less heart-health benefit from stopping smoking, especially for women with diabetes.

More information regarding the study can be found in "Smoking Cessation, Weight Change and Coronary Heart Disease Among Postmenopausal Women With and Without Diabetes," in the Journal of the American Medical Association.