Eyeing Smoking as a Serious Health Issues on Women's Day


Eyeing Smoking as a Serious Health Issues on Women's DayIncreasing awareness about women health issues that usually remain the last in the list of priorities in a family.


In all WHO regions except Europe, girls aged 13�15 years old are using tobacco at higher rates than women aged 15 and older. An indication of  the health storm that will take over the world in near future. This could be a reflection of aggressive tobacco industry marketing to girls, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries. The high rates among girls is very concerning as these data suggest potential substantial increases for women in the near future. Smoking and tobacco use pose a serious risk of death and disease for women. Cigarette smoking, alone kills an estimated 173,940 women in the United States. Although fewer women smoke than men, the percentage difference between the two has continued to decrease. Today, with a much smaller gap between men's and women's smoking rates, women share a much larger burden of smoking-related diseases.


 

Most of the increased mortality is due to lung cancer, head and neck cancer, COPD, heart disease and stroke, and shorter life expectancy by more than 10 years.


 

Lung cancer is now the leading cancer killer among women. And of those deaths, 90 percent are attributed to tobacco dependence, according to Michael Fiore, MD, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
 

Quitting smoking at any age lowers the risk of death for smoking-related diseases. And quitting before the age of 40 reduces the risk of death associated with continued smoking by 90 percent.

Why Smoking Needs to be Controlled?
  • Eyeing Smoking as a Serious Health Issues on Women's DayHandle Infertility: If you smoke for many years, or smoke many cigarettes per day, your risk for fertility problems is increased. Fertility issues could range from Ovulation problems, Genetic issues, Damage to reproductive organs, eggs or premature menopause, miscarriage, along with increased risk of cancer and increased risk of miscarriage. Smokers are also more likely to give birth to babies with health problems.

  • Evade Lung Cancer: In 2009, an estimated 70,490 women died of lung and bronchus cancer. Lung cancer is likely to overtake breast cancer as the main cause of cancer death among European women by the middle of this decade, according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology on February 13. In the UK and Poland it has already overtaken breast cancer as the main cause of cancer deaths in women.  In 2013 there will be an estimated 88,886 deaths (14.6 per 100,000 women) from breast cancer and 82,640 deaths (14 per 100,000 women) from lung cancer. Lung cancer deaths have risen by 7% among women since 2009.

  • Higher Blood Pressure: With each cigarette, the blood pressure rises transiently and the pressor effect may be missed if the blood pressure is measured 30 minutes after the last smoke. The transient rise in blood pressure may be most prominent with the first cigarette of the day even in habitual smokers. About 30% of all deaths from heart disease in the U.S. are directly related to cigarette smoking. That's because smoking is a major cause of coronary artery disease, especially in younger people.

  • Not a healthy option to manage Body Weight:  Teenage girls often start to smoke to suppress appetite, avoid weight gain and to identify themselves as independent and glamorous, without much realization of what they are heading into. Smoking a single cigarette has been shown to induce a 3% rise in energy expenditure (EE) within 30 min. Besides its metabolic properties, nicotine could induce an acute anorexic effect: during a 2-h period, hunger and food consumption were negatively associated and satiety and fullness were positively associated with increasing doses of nicotine.

  • Kids less likely to smoke: The number one predictor for teenagers and smoking is having a parent who smokes,� says Blatt. They learn by example, so do them and yourself a favor by committing to quit as soon as possible.

Although overall smoking prevalence declined slightly since 2005, it was 19.0% in 2011, higher than the HP2020 target of 12% for all U.S. adults.

This underscores the need for more extensive implementation of evidence-based interventions, such as those outlined in the World Health Organization's MPOWER package. These include increasing the price of tobacco products, implementing smoke-free laws in workplaces and public places, warning about the dangers of tobacco use with antitobacco media campaigns, increasing access to help quitting, and enforcing restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. Such population-based interventions have been shown to reduce population smoking prevalence as well as overall smoking intensity (i.e., CPD)  
 

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Dated 09 March 2013

 

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