Ladies, kick the butt or risk early menopause

Ladies, kick the butt or risk early menopause

Premature Onset Raises Death Risk, Says Study

    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.
    The study, which was carried in the journal Menopause, pooled data from several previous studies that included about 6,000 women in the US, Poland, Turkey and Iran.
    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. During menopause, a ovaries stop producing eggs and a woman can no longer get pregnant.
    “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,” said study author Volodymyr Dvornyk, from the University of Hong Kong.
    Dvornyk and his colleagues also analysed 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% more likely than non-smokers to have early menopause.
    Both early and late menopause have been linked to health risks. Women who hit menopause late are thoughtto 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, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, and others,” Dvornyk said. Overall, early menopause is also thought to slightly raise a woman's risk of death in the years following.