Smoking just two cigarettes a day can wreak havoc on your heart, study says
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New research dismantles the long-held belief that smoking less means less harm.
Scientists now say that the body suffers significant cardiovascular damage from even low levels of smoking.
Researchers at the American Heart Association’s Center on Tobacco Addiction and Regulation analyzed data from 22 long-term health studies involving more than 320,000 adults.
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The findings, published in PLOS Medicine, show that smoking even a few cigarettes a day dramatically increases the risk of heart disease and premature death and that quitting smoking completely is the only way to reverse those risks.
In the study, adults were divided into never smokers, current smokers and former smokers, according to a news release.
A large long-term study finds that even minimal smoking can double the risk of heart disease and death. (iStock)
The researchers looked at how much people smoked, measuring in “pack-years” and cigarettes per day. For ex-smokers, they looked at how much time had passed since they stopped smoking.
The team then compared those patterns to multiple health outcomes, including heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and overall death rates.
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Current smokers had more than twice the risk of dying from any cause compared to people who never smoked.
Those who smoked only two to five cigarettes a day were twice as likely to develop heart disease.
Smoking just two to five cigarettes a day can more than double the risk of any type of heart disease and increase the risk of death from any cause by 60% compared to people who never smoked. (iStock)
“Smoking even two to five cigarettes a day can more than double the risk of any type of heart disease and increase the risk of death from any cause by 60% compared to people who never smoked,” the association said in the statement.
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The study also found that health risks “decrease immediately” after someone quits smoking and continue to decrease substantially over time.
Within 10 years, ex-smokers experienced significant improvements and, after about 20 years, had more than 80% lower risk than current smokers, but it takes a long time for the damage to completely disappear.
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According to the AHA, “While quitting smoking greatly reduced the health risks related to smoking in the first 10 years, it may take 30 years or more for health risks among people who previously smoked to be on par with those of people who never smoked.”
The researchers noted that the study did not test the effects of e-cigarettes. (iStock)
Researchers say the lesson from this study is that the only safe level of smoking is not smoking at all.
“Low-intensity smoking is associated with cardiovascular risk, and the main public health message for current smokers should be to quit smoking early, rather than to reduce the amount of smoking,” they wrote.
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The authors noted some limitations, namely that smoking habits were self-reported at the beginning of each study.
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“The stigma associated with smoking could lead to underreporting of current smoking, especially among women, affecting the accuracy of the data,” the study states.
The researchers also did not include data on e-cigarettes or other tobacco products.
Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant at News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of topics including food and drink, travel and health.