A surprising new study has cropped up in the medical world relating smoking to causing excess pain in menstruation. The subjects of the group included women who were current smokers and had started the habit by the age of thirteen. But as our medical expert knows knows, this report raises the bar somewhat. But he also says that the study’s findings merit further testing. Smoking, for example, can reduce the flow of blood in the arteries and that could be linked to the severe menstrual pain so many of the test subjects reported. Our expert has been practicing medicine in Glendale, Arizona since 2008, where he specializes in treating a wide range of women’s health issues.
Menstrual cramps already affect some ninety-one percent of all women during their reproductive lives, and the women as many as twenty-nine percent of those women who were surveyed said that their menstrual cramps were severe.
The new data, which followed a study group of women over a twelve year period, concluded that smoking before the age of thirteen can raise the risk of severe and chronic menstrual pain by as much as sixty percent. The study defined severe and chronic menstrual cramps as pain that lasts longer than two days. He makes every effort to keep up to date with new advances in medicine, and was intrigued by a new report that links smoking among teenage girls to an increased risk of chronic and severe menstrual cramps.
That report just strengthens the data that has been taken for granted for many years: smoking is a bad idea, no matter who you are or what your age. It compared those women with other subjects who had never smoked at all.
Barry Littlejohn, a medical practitioner and certified doctor, says that the findings in this study are observational, and that there are theories that could explain them.