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After being met with mixed reactions when they were introduced, the laws that ban smoking in public seem to have proved their worth. A significant drop in the number of heart attacks in Britain since the laws were introduced seems to show conclusively that less second hand smoke means less risk of heart disease. Find out just why avoiding cigarette smoke is good for your health, and what else you can do to decrease your risk of heart disease.
Significant decrease
Since the introduction of the laws, the number of patients admitted to hospitals for heart attacks has fallen by 1,200 in comparison to the previous five years. That’s a 2.4 per cent reduction – large enough to show that this is no coincidence.
Smoke hazard
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Heart disease is the biggest cause of death in many industrialised nations, and second-hand smoke can contribute to heart disease. In some cases, second hand smoke can even cause an acute reaction – meaning that it can induce heart attacks immediately. The smoking ban will be helpful to your heart and the health of hearts all over Britain in both the long and short term – that’s because it reduces the immediate effects of second hand smoke, while also discouraging smoking in general and decreasing exposure to second hand smoke.
What else works?
Other than quitting smoking, and staying out of the way of those who do, what can you do that’s beneficial to your heart and its health? It’s helpful to keep your diet healthy, with foods that fight heart disease. Remember that deep-fried foods and takeaways in general are less healthy than fresh foods and food prepared and cooked at home. Add some regular to exercise to this, and you’ve got a recipe for a healthy heart.
June 19th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Has the author actually read the report and noted that the fall is in line with falls in earlier years.
If you want specifics, here are the figures Gilmore uses (table 1 of the study)…
Emergency AMI admissions in English hospitals
2002/03: 61,498
2003/04: 60,680 (a fall of 1.33%)
2004/05: 58,803 (a fall of 3.1%)
2005/06: 55,752 (a fall of 5.19%)
2006/07: 53,964 (a fall of 3.21%)
2007/08: 51,664 (a fall of 4.26%)
As you can see, the decline in admissions in the year after the smoking ban was larger than the year before but smaller than the year before that. In fact, the average in the previous two years was 4.2%—almost exactly what it was in the year after the ban (4.26%).
Various influences have been cherry-picked to create the claimed drop and factors such as the 5-a-day health initiative have been ignored.
Maybe, just maybe, the report’s authors Dr Anna Gilmore, a tobacco control enthusiast, and her colleagues at Bath University work in a department that benefits from pharmaceutical grants!!!!