Smokers who successfully completes can enjoy yet another health benefit: cholesterol profiles improved. A boost to the "good" cholesterol appears to contain up despite the weight gain after putting the last cigarette, hints a new study.
If confirmed in future studies, the finding may shed light on the strong and still somewhat mysterious relationship between smoking and heart disease. Up to 20 percent of deaths from heart disease are attributable to smoking, but investigators have not yet had a clear understanding of what lies behind the effect. Smoking is likely to affect the cardiovascular system in a variety of ways, including low oxygen levels and wear one's heart.
Some small studies have also shown that smoking reduces the good cholesterol (HDL) and an increase in bad cholesterol (LDL), a leading researcher Dr. Adam Gepner the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Health, Madison, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
To test the effect of smoking on cholesterol levels more stringent, and in a realistic context, employee Gepner and colleagues more than 1,500 smokers representative of the current population of the United States, including the high proportion of overweight and obese.
The average participant smoked about 21 cigarettes a day before the start of the study. After a year in one of five smoking cessation programs, 334 (36 percent) had successfully quit smoking.
The researchers found that those who quit smoking have increased by an average of around 5 percent, or 2.4 milligrams per deciliter (mg / dl), HDL cholesterol.
Abstainers have also seen an increase in large HDL particles, which are important to reduce the risk of heart disease, so the researchers report in the American Heart Journal.
The effects were slightly stronger in women. However, it does not seem to matter how many cigarettes were smoked at the beginning of the investigation: heavy smokers had similar HDL benefits than lighter smokers after quitting.
One drawback to stop smoking can be weight gain. Indeed, the team that finishes on average were about 10 pounds over a pound or two in the group who relapsed to smoking. Many participants were already obese at baseline, with an average body mass index (BMI) of 29.6. (A BMI between 20 and 25 are generally considered healthy).
Adding books is known to harm cholesterol, increase the wrong kind and reducing the good kind. Consequently, researchers believe that weight gain could offset some of the beneficial effects observed in abstainers.
"Additional benefits on cholesterol levels may actually have been masked by weight gain after stopping to see," said EANPG.
"It is important to advocate for smoking cessation weight gain and the need for a healthy diet and regular exercise during the period of quitting," he added.
Scientists warn that their results do not prove that smoking causes the improvement of cholesterol levels. Further studies are needed to rule out other possible explanations, such as the role of changes in alcohol consumption, which is known to affect HDL.
Gepner stated that it is not clear how smoking can affect cholesterol levels, although it would have been able to make changes to control the distribution of proteins of cholesterol. Smoking can damage these proteins.Regardless, benefits were seen that might translate into better heart health.
Comments
Post a Comment