Drinking and Smoking When Young Can Prematurely Age Your Heart

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• Our arteries naturally stiffen with age, but certain habits or behaviors can worsen this process.
• New research has found that drinking and smoking between the ages of 17 and 24 can accelerate stiffness in the arteries by as much as 10 percent.
• The heavier young adults’ use of alcohol and tobacco was, the worse their arterial stiffness. This was more significant in women.
• This acceleration in stiffness is problematic as it can increase the risk of heart disease or lead to stroke later in life.

As we age, our arteries naturally become less elastic, a condition associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

New research presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2021 has found that drinking alcohol from adolescence to young adulthood can accelerate this process and significantly increase cardiovascular disease risk later in life.

Findings also suggest that combining smoking and drinking for this age group had an even greater impact on health.

“Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains a vast global burden on public health, and while both acute and pharmacological interventions have massively improved in living memory, the next and most important step is to target primary prevention of CVD via optimizing modifiable risk factors including smoking and alcohol use,” study author Hugo Walford, a medical student at University College London, told Healthline.