There are countless reasons why women who smoke should kick the habit for their health, but here’s a few more.
Researchers have found that women who had one or more of five gene variations linked to the metabolism of estrogen and susceptibility to environmental toxins, like cigarette smoke, had more vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flashes than women without the variants. This was especially true for African-American women.
Previous research has linked cigarette smoking to earlier menopause and worse symptoms, but a recent study is among the first to examine the impact of smoking and genes on hot flashes.
Smoking & Earlier Menopause
Women who smoke may hit menopause about a year earlier than those who don’t light up, according to a study that also notes an earlier menopause may influence the risk of getting bone and heart diseases.
Non-smokers hit menopause between age 46 and 51, on average. But in all but two of the studies, smokers were younger when they hit menopause, between 43 and 50 overall.
Both early and late menopause 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. Overall, early menopause is also thought to slightly raise a woman’s risk of death in the years following.
Smokers Had More Hot Flashes
As expected, smokers in the study reported more hot flashes than women who did not smoke.
But smokers who also carried specific gene variations linked to estrogen metabolism and susceptibility to environmental toxins had the most hot flashes of all, says researcher and ob-gyn Samantha Butts, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Butts says knowing that smoking increases the frequency and severity of hot flashes may convince some menopausal women to give up cigarettes once and for all, even if they have tried to quit before.
About 1 in 5 women in the U.S. — roughly 20 million women — smokes cigarettes.
“The reason close to 20% of women still smoke is because it is really hard to quit,” Butts says. “But if you tell a woman who is having terrible hot flashes that it might be because she smokes, that could make all the difference.”
Menopause, Smoking, and Genes
The study included close to 300 women followed for just over a decade as part of a larger menopause study. About half the participants were African-American and half were white.
The women were still menstruating when they entered the study, and they either entered menopause or completed it over 11 years of observation.
During this time, blood samples were taken and the women were questioned about their medical and reproductive histories, as well as their menopausal symptoms and lifestyle.
After factoring in the impact of other hot flash risk factors, such as obesity and alcohol consumption, African-American smokers were 84% more likely to experience hot flashes at one point in the study than African-American nonsmokers. White smokers were 56% more likely to have hot flashes than white nonsmokers.
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