There’s no doubt that smoking is a particularly bad habit, though people are free to make their own choices, but the amount of evidence that directly links cigarettes to potentially fatal illnesses is endless. Though in between all of the negative affects that smoking brings to a persons life, something in cigarettes have been found to help lower the risk of a common pregnancy complication called ‘Preeclampsia’
Preeclampsia is a particularly severe pregnancy condition, which develops in the 20th week of a woman’s pregnancy and starts as a result of a build up of protein in the urine. If the illness is not caught and treated in time it can cause seizures and inevitably lead to a comatose state. The first signs that preeclampsia is affecting a woman would be a sudden increase in blood pressure.
The discovery of the link between smoking and the lowered risk of preeclampsia came about during a regular pregnancy study, 600,000 Swedish women had a health check whilst giving birth and researchers found that of those who smoked half were less likely to develop this condition.
Doctors are unsure of the causes for this reaction, but are sure it is not the nicotine. Some researchers believe that it might be the carbon monoxide, which is known to stunt the development of certain proteins in the body; hence it reduced the overall amount of protein and lowers the risk of preeclampsia.
Whatever the reasons, smoking is still not recommended during pregnancy or at any other time, but if they are able to pinpoint the reasons why cigarette smoking stops this illness we’ll have a treatment for it.
