You’ll Think Twice About ‘Social Smoking’ After Reading This Report

A new report published in the British Medical Journal has found that if you smoke as much as just one cigarette a day, your chances of getting a heart attack or a stroke are only cut slightly compared to someone who smokes as many as 20 a day.

The report from Allan Hackshaw, a professor at University College London, states that someone who smokes one cigarette a day will still carry some of the risks of heart problems and strokes of someone who would smoke a full pack.

“If someone smokes one cigarette instead of 20 per day, intuitively we’d think that the risk drops to 1/20, or 5%.

“This seems to be the case for lung cancer, but is not true for heart attacks and stroke, where one cigarette per day carries around 50% of the risk of a pack a day."

Heart attacks and strokes are one of the most common tobacco-related deaths worldwide with almost 30% of people falling ill and dying each year because of it.

Hackshaw states that, although weaning off cigarettes is great, the only way to ensure that you have no adverse health risks, is to give up smoking entirely.

“There is more reason to believe that lower cigarette consumption will reduce the risk of chronic lung disease and lung cancer, the other two big causes of early death from smoking,” he concluded.