With summer approaching, more people will be heading out to catch up with their friends. However, how many of you will be considering having a cigarette once you’re out socialising — even if you don’t smoke regularly?
What type of smoker are you?
Find out whether you’re defined as a low-level or occasional smoker with Nicotinell, providers of nicotine patches. There are three main groups to be aware of:
- The binge smoker — this is someone who will smoke a lot but only at certain times of the week, such as throughout the weekend.
- The low-level smoker — this is someone who will either smoke a small number of cigarettes on a daily basis or choose to only smoke occasionally.
- The social smoker — this is someone who will likely smoke only when in social settings, such as at a pub or when hanging out with friends.
The key risks of social smoking
It’s important to understand that there is no safe level of smoking whatsoever, and it will cause damage to an individual’s welfare — whether you’re smoking occasionally or once an hour. This statement has been underlined by online resource iCanQuit, which has been developed by the Cancer Institute NSW when looking into the health effects of irregular smoking.
Tripling their chances of dying of lung cancer or heart disease are people that smoke between one and four cigarettes per day. Both light and intermittent smokers were also found to be at nearly the same risk of suffering from the cardiovascular disease as those who smoked every day.
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Published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, which involved almost 40,000 people, a report has outlined a relationship between social smoking and health risks.
From the study, over 10% of the group classed themselves as ‘social smokers’ and another 17% said that they were current smokers. Regardless of the type of smoker though, around 75 percent of the current and social smokers were found to have had high blood pressure and an estimated 54 percent had high cholesterol. This is after the research team had adjusted for differences in factors which included demographics and obesity.
“Doctors and nurses need to educate patients that social smoking is still a major health risk and is not a long-term healthy choice,” commented Kate Gawlik, an assistant professor of clinical nursing at The Ohio State University.
She went on further to say that: “Not smoking at all is the best way to go. Even smoking in a social situation is detrimental to your cardiovascular health.”
Dividing the impact of smoking into gender, iCanQuit found that males who were occasional smokers were 60% more likely to die earlier than men that did not smoke. Meanwhile, females who were low-level smokers were found to typically lose between four and six years of their lives than non-smoking females.
“Even if you smoke occasionally or just on weekends, you are still a smoker – and the health dangers of low-level smoking are serious and significant,” pointed out iCanQuit.
Sources
- https://news.osu.edu/news/2017/05/03/social-smoking/
- https://www.icanquit.com.au/reasons-to-quit/smoking-and-your-health/social-smoking-and-binge-smoking
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