Smoking and Contraception

Smoking cigarettes while taking birth control pills dramatically increases risks of heart attack for women over 35. Smoking is far more dangerous to a woman's health than taking birth control pills, but the combination of oral contraceptive pill use and smoking has a greater effect on heart attack risk than the simple addition of the two factors. Smoking cigarettes while taking birth control pills increases a woman's risk of having an ischemic stroke (three times more likely in pill users than in nonusers) or a hemorrhagic stroke (three to four times that of nonusers), according to a large World Health Organization (WHO) study. Read more