Smoking and Menstrual Problems in 16-Year-Olds

The British Birth Cohort Study (BCS70) is a cohort study which follows all the people born in England, Scotland and Wales in the week of 5–11 April 1970. The data described here were from the postal questionnaires returned by 2181 young women aged between 16 and 16½ in 1986. Thirty-nine per cent of the respondents had never smoked, 39% had smoked at some time and 22% were regular smokers. Most of the respondents indicated that they had one or more of the following symptoms associated with menstruation: pain, depression, irritability, headaches, cramps. Analysis of the data showed that regular smokers were significantly more likely than those who had never smoked to have all these symptoms. Whilst the percentage of ‘sometime smokers’ experiencing pain, depression and headaches fell between smokers and ‘never-smokers’, the percentage experiencing unpleasant symptoms in general, irritability and cramps was the same as for regular smokers. If causality could be demonstrated, messages about immediate health problems such as these might be more powerful health education to young women than information about long-term risks.