Tag Archive for 'smoking'

Smoking may increase risk for breast cancer

Published
by
Jana
on April 28, 2009
in Health and Wellness
. 0 Comments

It has long been a fact that smoking causes lung cancer and is a culprit in several other cancers as well, but, until recently, scientists have usually claimed that it did not have an effect on breast cancer. A Canadian panel of experts is now disputing the long-standing view.

On Thursday, April 23, the panel revealed the findings from new studies indicating that smoking increases the risk of breast cancer and cautioned that young women and girls were vulnerable to certain risks when exposed to smoke. Even exposure to secondhand smoke during their important period of development may raise their risk for breast cancer later in life.

In the report, heavy evidence was found that secondhand smoke played a key role in pre-menopausal breast cancer, but did not find enough proof that it increased the risk in post-menopausal breast cancer.

In the wake of these findings, most scientists say that there is not enough evidence to conclude that smoking plays a role in breast cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer said in a current report that there is scarce if any link between active smoking and breast cancer. In 2006, the surgeon general’s office announced that there was not enough evidence to claim that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer.

A message women have received in the past is that you must go and get a mammogram because there is nothing you can do to stop breast cancer. Dr. Anthony Miller, a member of the panel and associate director for research of the University of Toronto’s school of public health, says that is total nonsense. He said, “You can be more physically active. You can eat a good diet and avoid becoming overweight. Do not drink heavily – and do not smoke.” Miller said, in so many words, is the main thing for young women to realize is that if you smoke, you not only increase your risk for lung cancer but for breast cancer as well.

Study compares the risks of smoking with being overweight

Published
by
Jana
on March 10, 2009
in Health and Wellness
. 0 Comments

When the risks of obesity were compared with those of smoking, a substantial study performed in Europe over several decades has found that young overweight men at 18 were as likely to die at 60 as light smokers. Even more alarming is that obese teens, like heavy smokers, were at twice the risk of dying early.

While obesity is said to cause many health problems, these new discoveries conflict with a multitude of recent studies that revealed that people who are just overweight are not necessarily at an increased risk for an early death.

This new study, which was published in last week’s British Medical Journal, traced the death rates of 45,920 Swedish men over a period of 38 years. The researchers discovered that the obese men who signed up for the Swedish army in 1969  and 1970 were more than two times likely to be at risk of dying by age 60, than those of normal weight. This is almost the same accumulation in risk confronting those recruits who were of normal weight but smoked half a pack of cigarettes or more per day.

The study found that overweight recruits who did not smoke were about a third more likely to die early, an increase in risk that is almost the same as that for normal- weight men who smoked up to  10 cigarettes a day.

Martin Neovius, the first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said “We know that health behaviors are established early on in life” so the message for teens is “If you already are smoking, then smoking cessation combined with weight maintenance counseling would probably be a good idea.”

Regardless of the expansiveness of the new study, some experts say that the findings may overemphasize the risks of being overweight. The researchers alluded to the fact that the weight of the men was known only when they enrolled in the military at age 18. Dr. David Williamson, a visiting professor at Emory University who has studied obesity and it’s effect on health, said that because most people gain weight as they get older, the overweight teens most likely went on to become obese adults, so their deaths may be attributed to being obese, not overweight earlier in their life.

} catch(err) {}