Cigarette smoking is bad for the health. But for
women, it may cause additional negative side effects, associated with
triggering the earlier onset of menopause. Multiple studies have confirmed that
tobacco smoking can actually affect the timing of the onset of menopause, the
intensity of the symptoms of menopause, and the incidence of osteoporosis after
menopause.
Women who smoke need to recognize these risks and do
their best to kick the habit.
Massachusetts
General Hospital Study
Menopause occurs when the ovaries cease to produce
estrogen. A gene, Bax, and a genetic receptor, Ahr, are responsible for the
onset of menopause when they become activated. Researchers at Massachusetts
General Hospital have discovered that the chemicals in smoking directly
activate these genetic components, creating what they call a “specific pathway”
to killing ovarian cells.
It has been found that women who smoke more than ten
cigarettes a day are 40 percent more likely to go into menopause early than
nonsmokers. As was generally observed by the result of the study, women who
smoke will enter menopause one to two years earlier.
University of Oslo, Norway, Study
Some interesting results were received by Norwegian scientists,
who tried to review multiple factors as potential triggers for the menopause to
strike earlier than expected statistically. Here are the important findings of
the study:
- The study showed substantial association between
current smoking and early onset of menopause, and that the earlier a woman
stops smoking, the more protection she derives with respect to an early
onset of menopause.
- While female
smokers increase their risks to escalate the menopause onset, the study did not find any relationship between passive
exposure to smoking and early menopause.
- No association was revealed between early menopause and alcohol or coffee consumption.
University
of Hong Kong Study
The most recent study, which was carried in the
journal Menopause, pooled data from several previous studies that included
about 6,000 women in the United States, Poland, Turkey and Iran.
The researchers concluded that while non-smokers hit
menopause between age 46 and 51, on average, in all but two of the reviewed
previous studies, smokers were younger when they hit menopause, between 43 and
50 overall.
"Our results give further evidence that smoking
is significantly associated with earlier (age at menopause) and provide yet
another justification for women to avoid this habit," wrote study author
Volodymyr Dvornyk, from the University of Hong Kong.
Dvornyk and his colleagues also analyzed five other
studies that used a cut-off age of 50 or 51 to group women into
"early" and "late" menopause. Out of more than 43,000 women
in that analysis, women who smoked were 43 percent more likely than nonsmokers
to have early menopause.
Both early and late menopause factors have been
linked to health risks. Women who hit menopause late, for instance, are thought
to be at higher risk of breast cancer because one risk factor for the disease
is more time exposed to estrogen.
"General consensus is that earlier menopause is
likely to be associated with the larger number and higher risk of
postmenopausal health problems, such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases,
diabetes mellitus, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, and others," explained Dvornyk.
Overall, he added, early menopause is also thought to slightly raise a woman's
risk of death in the years following.
There are two theories for why smoking might mean
earlier menopause, said Jennie Kline, an epidemiologist from Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York. Smoking make have an
effect on how women's bodies make, or get rid of, estrogen. Alternatively, some
researchers believe certain components of cigarette smoke might kill eggs,
added Kline, who was not involved in the study.
Dvornyk's team did not have information on how long
women had been smoking or how many cigarettes they smoked each day, so his team
could not determine how either of those factors may have affected age at
menopause. For that reason, and a lack of data on other health and lifestyle
factors linked to menopause, the analysis may not be enough to resolve
lingering questions on the link between smoking and menopause, they said.
Alcohol, weight and whether or not women have given
birth may each also play a role in when they hit menopause, but the evidence
for everything other than smoking has been mixed, Kline said. It is also
possible that the same factors that influence age at menopause may determine
whether women have trouble with infertility or not, or how late they can get
pregnant.
Conclusion
While there is a definite connection between smoking
and menopause, but can smoking indeed cause early menopause? "Smoking can
cause a woman to go through menopause a year or two earlier, but it isn't going
to push a woman into menopause before the age of 40," says Geoffrey
Redmond, MD, director of the Hormone Center of New York. So, in other words,
smoking may cause the earlier menopause, but is unlikely to cause the early
menopause in strict scientific terms.
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