Women Dying From A Man’s Habit

Studies show that women are doing this younger and doing it more often. Men died more from this but, over the past few years, women have caught up.

One researcher says ‘Women are lighting it up like men now’.  Women have caught up with men in the risk of dying from smoking side-effects and related illnesses. Since 1980 the amount of women dying from smoking related issues as increased dramatically, where men have stayed the same.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, ”the U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women. Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.”

Here were the 3 findings that Yahoo reported:

1.)     The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

2.)    A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

3.)    Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.