|
HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Can Smoking Control Prevent Heart Disease And Stroke Deaths? Cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, has been a major cause of illness and mortality in high-income nations for many years. However, the burden of cardiovascular disease is now rapidly rising in low- and middle-income countries: three-quarters of all deaths from heart disease and stroke occur in low- and middle-income countries. Risk factors that would lead to development of cardiovascular disease include smoking, high blood pressure (hypertension), high blood cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, and physical inactivity. In the United States, about 20 percent of all deaths from heart disease are directly linked to smoking. In fact, a person's risk of heart attack greatly increases with the number of cigarettes smoked. Smoking not only affects smokers, it would put the people around them at risk of developing health problems such as chronic respiratory conditions, cancer, and heart disease through secondhand smoke. Nicotine present in cigarettes can cause decreased oxygen to the heart, increased blood pressure and heart rate, increase in blood clotting, and damage to cells that line coronary arteries and other blood vessels.
German scientists identified in the late 1920s a link between smoking and lung cancer, and in 1950, British researchers demonstrated a clear relationship between smoking and cancer. Scientists continued to unveil unfavorable evidence of smoking in the 1980s. Over the years, more and more studies have proven that smoking could lead to development of numerous diseases including lung cancer, heart disease, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), erectile dysfunction and birth defects. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), smoking kills nearly 6 million people each year (as at July 2013). More than 5 million deaths are smokers while more than 600000 are non-smokers being exposed to secondhand smoke. Unless urgent action is taken, the annual death toll could increase to more than 8 million by 2030. This has caused many nations including Singapore to impose high duty on tobacco products to curb tobacco smoking. While the rates of consumption in the developed world have either peaked or declined, they continue to climb in the developing countries. Researchers from Stanford University, USA argued that implementing smoke-free laws and raised tobacco taxes in India would yield substantial and rapid health benefits by preventing future cardiovascular disease deaths. In a paper published on July 9, 2013 in ‘PLOS Medicine’, they suggested that specific tobacco control strategies would be more effective than others for the reduction of cardiovascular disease deaths over the next decade in India and possibly in other low- and middle-income countries. A micro simulation model was developed to quantify the likely effects of various tobacco control measures and pharmacological therapies on deaths from heart attack and stroke stratified by age, gender, and urban/rural status in India between 2013 and 2022. Besides cigarette smoking, data on bidi smoking, chewing tobacco, and secondhand smoke were also included. The model incorporated population-representative data from India on multiple risk factors that affect heart attack and stroke mortality, including hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease. Data from India on cigarette smoking, bidi smoking, chewing tobacco, and secondhand smoke were also included. The effects of 5 different tobacco control measures (smoke-free legislation, tobacco taxation, provision of brief cessation advice by health care providers, mass media campaigns, and advertising bans) and increased access to aspirin, antihypertensive drugs, and statins were simulated on deaths from heart attack and stroke. Based on their model, the researchers concluded that smoke-free legislation and tobacco taxation are expected to be the most effective strategies for reducing heart attack and stroke deaths over the next decade. These 2 measures alone could prevent about 9 million deaths, that is a quarter of the expected deaths from heart attack and stroke in India by 2022, and a combination of tobacco control policies and pharmacological interventions could prevent up to a third of these deaths.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright
2007-2012 © HowToPreventHeartDisease.com . All Rights Reserved.d........ |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
