Smoking Menthol cigarettes increase risk of strokes

The team reviewed data of more than 5,000 US people over the age of 20 to investigate the potential link between smoking mentholated cigarettes and developing cardiovascular and lung diseases Press TV reported.

About 26 percent of the participants said they usually smoked mentholated cigarettes while the rest smoked non-mentholated ones.

Their findings also showed that the risk of stroke was more than two times higher for menthol cigarette smokers.

The risk was even more than three times higher for women and non-African-Americans who used Menthol cigarettes, wrote Dr. Nicholas Vozoris and colleagues in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

“One potential mechanism is that menthol stimulates upper-airway cold receptors, which can increase breath-holding time, which may in turn facilitate the entrance of cigarette particulate matter into the lungs,” said Dr. Vozoris.

Mentholated smoking did not increase the risk of developing other health conditions such as heart attack, high blood pressure and lung disease.

“Why smoking mentholated cigarettes would not result in an increase in forms of cardiopulmonary disease, other than stroke, is not clear,” said Dr. Vozoris adding that any form of smoking poses serious risks to the smokers and people around them.

“There is no 'good' cigarette type," Vozoris said. “Smoking any kind of cigarette is bad for one's health, and serves to increase one's risk for a variety of cancers, heart diseases and lung diseases. However, this study shows that smoking mentholated cigarettes may place one at even higher risk for stroke than smoking regular, non-ment.”