Delaying your first durry of the day is better for you than lighting up straight away.
The Back Page really shouldn’t have to say this, but smoking is bad for you.
Yet a new piece of research from a five-person team at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, suggests that having your first cigarette later in the day is slightly less bad for you than having one before your morning coffee.
“A shorter time from waking to the first cigarette is associated with a higher risk of hypertension, dyslipidaemia and atherosclerosis, which are important risk factors of CVD … However, there is a lack of research exploring this association in depth,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of Public Health.
Researchers examined hospital admission and death certificate data for approximately 30,000 dart afficionados (that is, people who smoked cigarettes on most or all days) who were part of the UK Biobank.
People were asked about their smoking habits as part of the entry survey to the Biobank study, including how soon after waking they smoked their first cigarette for the day.
They controlled for the effects of a whole range of factors like age, sex, race, smoking behaviours (e.g., number of cigarettes smoked each day and how young participants were when they started smoking), socioeconomic status, physical activity, BMI and intake of alcohol, fruit, vegetable, red meat and processed meat.
The results aren’t pretty for the 14% of the sample whose morning routine included reaching for a gasper as soon as their eyes open.
People who reported having a cigarette within five minutes of waking had a 65% higher risk of all-cause mortality compared to patients who delayed their first nicotine hit for at least two hours.
The risk of all-cause mortality was 48% higher in people who had their first cigarette between five and 60 minutes of waking, and 30% higher in people who waited an hour or two before having a drag on a death stick.
Similar associations were observed for cardiovascular and ischaemic heart disease-related mortality, as well as incident cardiovascular or ischaemic heart disease. There were no associations between time from waking to first cigarette and stroke mortality or incident stroke.
The boffins suggested ciggies ramp up the natural increases in blood pressure that are part of getting up in the morning.
“Blood pressure is usually elevated upon waking up, and morning blood pressure surge is a risk factor for incident CVD, CVD mortality and all-case mortality, regardless of the average 24-h blood pressure,” they wrote.
“Nicotine can increase blood pressure, so individuals smoking a cigarette as soon as they wake up may make their blood pressure surge and reach a higher peak than others, which may further increase the risks of CVD and premature mortality … [This] may explain the correlations of time from waking to the first cigarette with incident CVD and mortality.”
However, it’s important to note that the UK Biobank only asked people who regularly smoked factory manufactured or hand-rolled cigarettes about their time from waking to first cigarette of the day, meaning they excluded people who smoke pipes, cigars and other types of cigarettes.
Importantly, there was no evidence in the paper to suggest the researchers are in the pocket of big tobacco – so the Back Page is going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were doing this study to add to the ever-growing collection of human knowledge, rather than their bank balances.
Send your delayed gratification tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
