A flavorful option doesn't come without added drawbacks to your health.
Doctors are warning that menthol cigarettes may cause more severe lung problems than regular tobacco, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
More trips to hospitals and emergency rooms were attributed to higher menthol use by smokers. There was also a larger incidence of people being hospitalized for more aggressive lung disease symptoms than people who smoked conventionally tobacco.
These worsening symptoms include a major increase in phlegm over a number of days or more difficulty breathing, referred to as "exacerbations."
Physicians hypothesized that menthol has a pain relieving agent on lung passages, making it harder to find that a smokers' ailments are worsening.
"We were surprised that menthol smokers, compared to non-menthol cigarette smokers, reported more severe exacerbations and had a greater odds of experiencing severe exacerbations," said Dr. Marilyn Foreman, of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Canadian researchers discovered that young smokers use menthol cigarettes at roughly double the rate of unflavored tobacco. Their study found that menthol purchasers smoked 43 cigarettes per week on average. On the other hand, non-menthol smokers only lit up 26 cigarettes on average.
Those who smoke menthols were also about three times more likely to say they didn't intend to quit smoking in the next year.
For the study, 3,758 menthol smokers and 1,941 regular smokers, aged 45 to 80 who smoked no less than 10 packs per year, were polled.
In general, the two different groups had comparable incidences of COPD exacerbations during the year and a half long study, the Daily News reported. But the menthol smokers' exacerbations were more common: .22 per year, compared to .18 per year among conventional tobacco smokers.
Menthol smokers also became short on breath faster than regular cigarette smokers when they were tested on how far they could walk in six minutes.
Even controlling for factors like age and other diseases, there was still a 29 percent increase in the risk of severe lung disease exacerbations with menthol smoking.
