Do Smokers Have a Higher Risk of Blindness?
July 25, 2011
The decision to quit smoking can be motivated by fear of the six smoking-related diseases, namely lung cancer, other cancers, stroke, heart attack, other lung diseases and… blindness.
Most smokers are unaware that blindness is even on this list. So researchers set out to understand how well smokers understand the various disease risks, and what impact they have on the choice to quit.
After surveying 200 current smokers, researchers found that of the six diseases, smokers were least aware of the risk of blindness. Yet, they named blindness as the second most compelling reason to quit smoking, after lung cancer.
This indicates that blindness should be emphasized as a risk factor in education and anti-smoking campaigns, to hopefully motivate more smokers to quit.
For an abstract of the article, click here.
Risa Schulman, PhD
Expert, Healthy Food and Dietary Supplement Science, Marketing and Regulatory
Tap~Root
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