Older women who quit smoking reduce heart diseases risks, irrespective of their diabetes status, according to researchers from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.
It is never too late to give up the bad habit of smoking. Researchers from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington found that quitting smoking can reduce the risk of heart diseases among older women irrespective of whether they have diabetes or not.
"Our study found that if you quit smoking, even for older women, the benefits start pretty quickly, within years," said Luo, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health in a press release. "It's never too late to benefit from quitting smoking."
This is the first study that looked into the reduced risk of heart disease after post-menopausal women with and without diabetes quit smoking.
Researchers observed similar results even when women who quit smoking gained 11 pounds after they quit smoking. However, the reduction was much more in women who gained less than 11 pounds after they quit smoking.
Authors studied the data of 104,391 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79 who participated in the National Institutes of Health-funded Women's Health Initiative. They found that among participants without diabetes, women who stopped smoking within the last three years experienced a 26 percent lower risk of developing heart diseases and this percentage increased to 61 percent for women who had stopped smoking for more than three years.
Among participants with diabetes, women who had stopped smoking experienced a 60 percent lower risk of developing heart diseases irrespective of when they stopped smoking.
