Two new studies report that smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third.\u00a0 This “heart gain” is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England’s Department of Health.<\/p>\n
Second-hand smoke is thought to increase the chances of a heart attack by making the blood more prone to clotting, reducing levels of beneficial “good” cholesterol, and raising the risk of dangerous heart rhythms.\u00a0 Heart attack rates across Europe and North America started to drop immediately following implementation of anti-smoking laws, reaching 17% after one year, then continuing to decline, with a 36% drop three years after enacting the restrictions.<\/p>\n
“If you are a smoker, the single biggest thing you can do to avoid a heart attack is to give up, which could also protect the heart health of friends and family.”<\/p>\n
BBC: Smoking bans ‘cut heart attacks’<\/a><\/p>\n BBC: Smoking curbs: The global picture<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two new studies report that smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third.\u00a0 This “heart gain” is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England’s Department of Health. Second-hand smoke is thought to increase the chances of a heart …
Continue reading Smoking bans’ benefits greater than expected.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-gw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}