If you’re thinking about making a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, it may help to know that new research says it could extend your life expectancy.
Every cigarette someone smokes, on average, can reduce their overall life expectancy by about 20 minutes, according to new research based on British smokers.
After taking into account socioeconomic status and other factors, researchers at University College London estimated the loss of life expectancy per cigarette at about 17 minutes for men and 22 for women, they wrote in an editorial published Sunday in the journal Addiction. .
That means that if someone smokes a pack of 20 cigarettes a day, “20 cigarettes in 20 minutes per cigarette is equivalent to almost seven hours of life lost per pack,” said Dr. Sarah Jackson, a senior researcher at the University of Alcohol and Alcohol. from UCL. Tobacco Research Group and lead author of the article.
“The time they’re losing is time they could spend with their loved ones in fairly good health,” Jackson said.
“Smoking does not affect the last period of life, which tends to be lived in poorer health. Rather, it appears to erode a relatively healthier section of midlife,” he said. “So when we talk about loss of life expectancy, life expectancy would tend to be lived in relatively good health.”
The research, commissioned by the UK Department of Health and Social Care, includes mortality data on men from the British Doctors Study and data on women from the Million Women Study. These studies found that, on average, people who smoked throughout their lives lost about 10 years of life compared to people who never smoked.
Similarly, in the United States, the life expectancy of smokers is estimated to be at least 10 years less than that of non-smokers, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall, the new data from the UK indicates that the harm caused by smoking appears to be cumulative. And the life expectancy that can be regained by quitting smoking can depend on several factors, such as age and how long someone has smoked.
“In terms of recovering this lost life, it’s complicated,” Jackson said.
“These studies have shown that people who stop smoking at a very young age (between the ages of 20 and 30) tend to have a similar life expectancy to people who have never smoked. But as you get older, you progressively lose a little bit more that you can’t get back if you stop,” he said. “But no matter how old you are when you stop smoking, you will always have a longer life expectancy than if you had continued smoking. So, in effect, while it may not be reversing lost life, it is preventing further loss of life expectancy.”
In their paper, Jackson and his colleagues wrote that a person who smokes 10 cigarettes a day and quits on January 1 could avoid losing a full day of life by January 8. They could prevent the loss of a full week of life before February 20. and a full month before August 5. At the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life expectancy.
“Quitting smoking is, without a doubt, the best thing you can do for your health,” Jackson said. “And the sooner you quit smoking, the longer you will live.”
Although smoking rates have been declining since the 1960s, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 Americans each year. But quitting smoking before age 40 can reduce the risk of dying from smoking-related diseases by about 90 percent, according to the CDC.
A separate study, published last year in the journal Nature, found that smoking can have both short- and long-term effects on a person’s immune system, leaving them vulnerable to the risk of developing infections, cancers or autoimmune diseases. The study also found that the more someone smoked, the more their immune response changed.
When smokers in the study quit, their immune response improved by one level but did not fully recover for years, according to study co-author Dr. Darragh Duffy, who heads the Institute’s Translational Immunology unit. Pasteur.
“The good news is that it is starting to be restored,” he said when the study was published. “There is never a good time to start smoking, but if you are a smoker, the best time to quit is now.”
