Women who smoke a cigarette a day risk heart attack, stroke than men

Just one cigarette a day is enough to raise the risk of heart disease and stroke by around 50 per cent, the Dailymail says in a report.

Researchers have found those who smoke once a day expose themselves to fully half the risk of heart disease and stroke seen in people who smoke 20 cigarettes.

Men who smoked one cigarette a day had 46 per cent of the increased risk of heart disease seen in people who smoked 20. Their danger of a stroke was 41 per cent of that seen in 20-a-day smokers.

Just one cigarette raised their risk of coronary heart disease by 48 per cent compared to being a non-smoker.

Women meanwhile saw their heart disease risk more than double with one cigarette a day, compared to if they did not smoke at all.

Women’s heart disease risk was more than doubled with one cigarette per day, according to one analysis in the research.

The researchers say their findings have important consequences for many smokers and health professionals who believe that smoking only a few cigarettes carries little or no harm.

This information might be particularly helpful at the start of a new year, when many smokers are likely to be thinking about stopping or smoking less.

The research team looked at the risks from smoking one, five, or 20 cigarettes per day in a trawl of studies from 1946 to 2015.

“We have shown that a large proportion of the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke comes from smoking only a couple of cigarettes each day,” the authors conclude.

“This probably comes as a surprise to many people. But there are also biological mechanisms that help explain the unexpectedly high risk associated with a low level of smoking.”