Smoking is bad for the heart. And this very quickly, even if you smoke in small quantities. Are all French people aware of this?
It is to find out, and thus better fight against the harmful effects of tobacco that Public Health France conducted the investigation.
For the year 2019, a telephone survey was carried out by the public health body among 5,074 adults aged between 18 and 85 living in mainland France.
The questions dealt with tobacco as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the thresholds for the quantity of tobacco and the length of time you must smoke to be at risk.
The result is rather encouraging. The knowledge of the French on the link between tobacco and cardiovascular disease has improved markedly over the past 20 years.
This is evidenced by the fact that 9 out of 10 French people declared in 2019 that tobacco was a risk factor for cardiovascular disease or stroke.
In fact, in 2000, 49.3% of French people declared that tobacco could have an influence on the development of cardiac pathologies.
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Gaps in terms of duration and quantity
However, significant gaps persist among a significant portion of the population.
Thus, “only two thirds (of those questioned editor’s note) were aware of the cardiovascular risk for consuming less than 10 cigarettes per day and 1 in 4 people were aware of an immediate increased cardiovascular risk in smokers”, specify the editors of the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin (BEH).
“There is no threshold below which smoking is without cardiovascular risk, even for a few cigarettes”, nevertheless recalls the French Federation of Cardiology.
A single cigarette is therefore sufficient to have a harmful effect on the heart. This is also the case for a very short period.
So in a short time, smokers increase their risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease. However, only “a quarter of the people questioned were aware of the fact that smoking, even for a short time (less than 5 years) could expose to an early risk”.
A significant proportion (28%) even thought that “it was necessary to smoke more than 20 years for that”.
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Necessary messages
Finally, “the fact of having a personal history or of having a loved one who had a stroke was not associated with a better knowledge of the link between tobacco and cardiovascular diseases and the thresholds of dangerousness in terms of the quantity of tobacco smoked and the duration of the disease. ‘exhibition’.
This prompted Public Health France to say that the anti-smoking messages should be reiterated. Especially for those who have less knowledge of it: the youngest as well as the less educated.
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