If you are a keeping your smoking down to a minimum, say, under five cigarettes a day, you may not be protecting yourself from developing heart disease or lung cancer by as much as you think. If you smoke from one to five cigarettes a day you will be tripling your chances of dying from coronary artery disease (compared to someone who does not smoke). Your lung cancer risk is almost four times as much as a non-smoker.

This is according to research carried out at the Norwegian National Nealth Institute. Researchers studied the death rates of over 43,000 people for the period 1975-2002.

The researchers found that the risk for women is greater than for men. Lung cancer risk for light smoking women is five times higher than a non-smoker, while for men it is three times higher.