At a recent meeting of the American College of Cardiology, a group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin led by Dr. JH Stein reported the results of a study that showed smokers who quit received a 14% decrease in heart disease risk within one year. The study paper itself has yet to find its way into the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that we could find but when it is we will pass along the abstract and information on where you can purchase the full text of the article. The results of their study have been encapsulated in a number of media outlets and we've provided a link here to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article about the study that was published on March 15, 2010.
From reading a few other media reports regarding the research paper's presentation, there were two pieces of information that caught our attention. The first, related to the above mentioned 14% reduction in heart disease risk one year after quitting, is that the 14% reduction in risk was determined by an observed 1% improvement in arterial blood flow and artery dilation among those study subjects who had quit one year previously. It's amazing that such a small improvement in artery performance can yield such a large reduction in heart disease risk. It should also be noted that one of the study researchers believes that the heart disease risk reduction begins within days after quitting even though they evaluated the risk reduction at one year post-quitting.
As we highlighted in last week's posting of our e-letter article titled, Endurance Training Improves Arterial Stiffness in COPD patients (also posted on our blog page at www.breathebetterblog.blogspot.com), another recent study showed a whopping 10% improvement in arterial flexibility from an eight week aerobic exercise program - a level equivalent to the performance of statin medications - and that study did not exclude smokers.
We are not sure whether the studies evaluate the same measure of arterial performance but if so leads one to believe that beginning and maintaining an ongoing exercise program, whether you quit smoking or not, can yield significant heart disease risk benefits, and may be more powerful than smoking cessation's impact. When the full study is available for our review we will follow up on this potential comparison between the two studies' measures.
This is not to say that current smokers shouldn't consider quitting. We all know it is the most beneficial thing you can do for your long-term health and quality of life. But, understanding that many people are not ready or willing to quit, it is strongly recommended you consider beginning and maintaining an active exercise program even if you just walk 20-30 minutes a day, 3-5 days a week.
The second item of interest highlighted in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story about the study was an observation by the researchers that the risk of diabetes among those who quit smoking rose significantly within the first two to three years after quitting (70% increased risk) but after ten years the risk of developing diabetes among former smokers dropped to nearly 0%. Why this happens was not explained in the article about the study but may be related to an observed weight gain by those in the study who quit smoking.
No comments:
Post a Comment