The benefits of quitting smoking during pregnancy outweigh the dangers of gaining weight

2024-04-19 15:59:12

Quit smoking during pregnancy may increase obesity-related complications for both parents and baby, but Rutgers Health researchers have found that reductions in stillbirths and premature births due to the tobacco overcome these dangers and speculate that nutritional counseling could increase benefits.

“The cigarettes They are a powerful appetite suppressant.so those who quit smoking tend to gain considerable weight, particularly when they are still going through withdrawal,” said the senior obstetrics and gynecology resident at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study. , Morgan Dunn.”The health benefits of quitting smoking obviously outweigh the dangers of excess weight for most people, but we wanted to see if that was true in pregnancy, where excessive weight gain poses significant dangers for both parents and child,” he adds.

“We found that quitting smoking during pregnancy associated with significant additional weight gainbeyond the weight gain that other people experienced during pregnancy, and we also found that quitting smoking was associated with a significant increase in weight- and blood pressure-related complications,” says Dunn.

However, the benefits in other areas more than offset any problem related to the increase of weightso experts recommend that doctors “advise patients to quit smoking and offer nutritional counseling that can minimize weight gain.”

Investigation

The study, published in ‘Hypertension’, analyzed the pregnancy records of more than 22 million pregnancies to compare outcomes between smokers, non-smokers, and those who quit smoking early in pregnancy. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (a general term for complications related to high blood pressure) occurred in 6.8 percent of nonsmokers, 7 percent of constant smokers, and 8.6 percent of those who smoked. They stopped smoking when they found out they were pregnant.

The risk was high even in people who They stopped smoking and did not gain excessive weight during pregnancy, but greater weight gain and higher total body mass index increased the risks even further. More than 17 percent of those who quit smoking and exceeded weight gain recommendations and became obese suffered from hypertensive disorders.

Such complications can pose significant health risks during pregnancy, but quitting smoking was associated with a more than 80 percent reduction in the stillbirth rate, which was 0.4 percent in both nonsmokers and quitters and 2.3 percent in persistent smokers. Persistent smokers were also more likely to give birth before completing 37 weeks of pregnancy. The preterm birth rate was 14.3 percent among persistent smokers, 7.7 percent among nonsmokers and 8.1 percent among those who quit smoking.

The study arose from a contrary conjecture of its main author, Todd Rosen, director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Rosen has seen such a steady increase in weight-related complications during pregnancy that he thought the drawbacks of weight gain might outweigh the many health benefits of quitting smoking.

Rosen proposed the theory to his colleague Cande Ananth, chief of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the medical school’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. who had both the relevant data and analytical skills to help test it. Ananth’s previous work found that, after decades of decline, the incidence of stroke and heart disease is beginning to rise again among younger Americans, possibly due to rising obesity.

Even so, Even Ananth considered the theory of Rosen.

“Cande thought it was obvious that the enormous benefits of quitting smoking would outweigh any weight-related drawbacks, even if the biggest weight gains occurred during pregnancy,” Rosen says. “The analysis proved him right, although we found negative aspects related to weight which could be mitigated by support such as nutritional counselling. The goal is for patients to get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks,” she adds.