Women who smoke are more likely to begin menopause before the age of 45 years, which puts them at increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease, researchers have found.

They found women aged between 59 and 60 years old were 59 per cent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone an early menopause, the Norwegian scientists discovered.

For the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was nearly doubled. But women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through it early.

The menopause is marked by the end of menstruation and occurs at the average age of 50. Symptoms include hot flushes, insomnia and mood swings.

“The earlier a woman stops smoking, the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause,” research leader Dr Thea Mikkelsen said.

Smoking is one of the biggest causes of death and illness in the UK. Every year, around 114,000 smokers die from smoking-related diseases such as heart disease and lung cancer.

The team from the University of Oslo studied 2,123 women. They found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.

Their findings were published in the online journal BMC Public Health.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=469755&in_page_id=1799