Women who formerly smoked but quit the habit experience fewer and less severe hot flashes during menopause compared with their counterparts who continue to smoke, findings of a new study suggest.

For the study published in the journal Maturitas on June 22, researchers followed 761 women between 45 and 54 years old for seven years, 347 of whom were experiencing hot flashes at the beginning of the study.

The researchers found that only 39 percent of the participants who never smoked experienced hot flashes. The symptom tends to be more prevalent in women who smoked, with 52 percent of former smokers and 62 percent of those who currently smoke experiencing the symptoms.

Of those who currently smoke, about 47 percent experienced moderate or several hot flashes. They were also most likely to experience the symptoms everyday or weekly. Moderate or severe flashes only affected 36 percent of former smokers.

Among those who never smoked, 22 percent had moderate or severe hot flashes and only a tenth of the women in this group experienced hot flashes everyday or weekly.

Study researcher Rebecca Smith, from the University of Illinois, and colleagues found that women who stopped smoking for at least five years were 45 percent less likely to experience severe or frequent hot flashes compared with those who continue to smoke albeit they were still more likely to experience the symptoms than those who never smoked.

The research revealed that women who quit smoking had 37 percent less odds of having hot flashes and 22 percent reduced likelihood to have severe or frequent symptoms than current smokers hinting of another benefit of quitting the habit.

Current smokers also had four times increased odds of having hot flashes compared with women who had never smoked.

"Subset analysis of the 353 women who had ever smoked found that women who had quit smoking for longer than 5 years had significantly lower odds, severity, and frequency of hot flashes than women who had continued smoking or women who had quit in the previous 5 years," the researchers wrote in their study. "These findings suggest that early smoking cessation programs may improve women's well-being during the menopausal transition."

Although the study does not provide evidence that smoking leads to or aggravates hot flashes, the researchers said that the results support findings of earlier studies. They think that smoking interferes with mechanisms known to be associated with hot flashes.

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