Beware, Smoke Risk Accelerate Menopause

Women who have the habit of smoking may have to stop that habit now. A study revealed that smokers' risk of women experience menopause about a year earlier than those who do not smoke. Studies conducted by the journal "Menopause" states that early menopause can be at risk of developing bone and heart disease.

This study collected data from several previous studies that included about 6,000 women in the United States, Poland, Turkey, and Iran. This study says that for women non-smokers, the average will experience menopause between the ages of 46 to 51 years. But in all studies, except for two studies, women smokers will experience menopause at a younger age, ie between 43 and 50 years.

During menopause, a woman's ovaries stop producing eggs and the woman can not be pregnant anymore.

"Our results provide further evidence that cigarette smoking was significantly associated with early (age of menopause) and provide justification for women to avoid this habit," said study author, Volodymyr Dvornyk from the University of Hong Kong.

Dvornyk and his colleagues also analyzed five other studies that use women's old age about 50 or 51 years to be "early" and "late" through menopause. Of the approximately 43,000 women in the analysis, women who smoke 43 percent more likely to experience menopause earlier than nonsmokers.

Both early and late menopause have been associated with health risks. Women who experience delays menopause for example, are considered high risk for breast cancer because one of the risk factors for the disease is more exposed to estrogen.

"The general consensus says, early menopause may be associated with greater numbers and a higher risk of health problems during menopause, such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, and others," he said in a Reuters Health Dvornyk .

Overall, he adds, early menopause is also thought to increase the risk of death of a woman in the next year. There are two theories why smoking may mean early menopause, says Jennie Kline, an epidemiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York.

Smoking has an effect on how women's bodies or in other words can get rid of estrogen. Some researchers believe that certain components of cigarette smoke can kill the eggs, said Kline, who was not involved in this study.

Dvornyk team does not have information about how long the woman smoked, whether old or not, or how many cigarettes they smoked each day. His team could not determine how one of these factors may influence the age of menopause.

For that reason and the lack of data on other health and lifestyle factors associated with menopause, the analysis may be insufficient to resolve the remaining questions between smoking and menopause. Alcohol, body weight, and whether the woman has given birth or not, may also play a role at the time they reach menopause. Even so, Kline stated that the evidence for anything other than smoking have been linked.