Remarkable:smoking women have higher concentrations of sex hormones in their blood after the menopause than non-smoking women.
Phew, women who smoke usually have high concentrations of sex hormones . after the menopause , as testosterone and estrogen, in the blood. Nicotine Cigarettes affect a gland in the brain that triggers the adrenal glands and ovaries to produce various hormones. The increase in concentration varies per hormone, but can be potentially hazardous to health.
The investigation
Judith Brand of the UMC Utrecht analyzed the data of more than 2,000 postmenopausal women who were on average 67 years of age. She used information from an English contributor to the EPIC study , which contains lifestyle and health data of 25,000 people.
Brand divided the smoking women in three groups:less than 10 cigarettes per day, 10 to 15 per day and more than 15 per day. The more women smoked, the higher the concentration of sex hormones , as it turned out. Remarkable: in women who had stopped smoking more than a year ago, hormone levels were back to those of non-smokers.
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Chronic diseases
Many sex hormones are implicated in several chronic diseases, such as breast cancer, cervical cancer and diabetes. Smoking increases the concentrations of these hormones and thus possibly also increases the risk of these diseases.
It is also plausible that smoking in women who are not yet in menopause has the same effect. This is only much more difficult to measure because of the monthly cycle and the associated hormone fluctuations.
Passive smoking harmless? Certainly not. Second-hand smoke at a young age causes hearing loss in the teens >
