Do you smoke a cigarette only when at parties or social functions. Then you have a 38 percent higher risk of dying over 15 years, compared to those who never smoke, shows a new Norwegian study.
– “The party smokers are nowadays younger and more educated than those who are smokers. It seems that they do not realize that this can have serious health consequences,” says Maja-Lisa Løchen, Professor of Preventive Medicine at UiT, Norway’s Arctic University for Today’s Medicine.
In her study published in BMJ Open, she and her colleagues collected information about the smoking habits of 4,020 women and 3,033 men aged 30 to 89 years. The data was collected in 2001, and in 2015 and they looked at the mortality rate of these persons.
“After adjusting for other factors, we found that smoking and smoking increased mortality by 38 percent after 15 years, compared to those who had never smoked,” says Løchen.
The most common cause of death was cancer, and cardiovascular disease being number two.
“We see it’s worse to smoke once in a while than being an smoker. Ex-smokers had 18 percent higher risk of death after 15 years, she points out.
Daily smokers, on the other hand, had twice as high risk of death after 15 years as non-smokers.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
