Marry A Smoker?

(Ask the Heart Association)

Marry a smoker and increase your risk for heart disease. This is Dr. Steven Andrew Davis, Speaking of Health. The American Heart Association says that people who have never smoked but live with smoking spouses have a 20% higher heart disease death rate than never-smokers living with non-smokers. While 20% may not sound like much, the math on this, as performed by the Heart Association, once showed an estimated 35 to 40,000 deaths from heart and blood vessel diseases and three to five thousand lung cancer deaths every year among non-smokers due to environmental tobacco smoke exposure. The figures were based on a study of almost half million adults who never smoked and were enrolled in the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study over a seven-year period.

The idea that environmental tobacco smoke hurts the non-smokers is not new, but the huge numbers of people involved in this dtudy was also what scientists call “prospective”, one that moves forward in time, rather than goes back and picks up data, subjecting it to potentially more biases.

This research also took into account other factors that could influence death from heart disease, such as diet, alcohol intake, use of medicines and physical activity. Of course, study conclusions can always be bolstered with more data down the line, but unfortunately for those who live with smokers, the risk from environmental tobacco smoke is less hazy. For a copy of this article, please visit our website, www.speakingofhealth.com. Speaking of Health, I’m Dr. Steven Andrew Davis for CBS News.