Health Home >>  >>   

Smokers who quit before 40 live nearly as long as non-smokers: Study

Written by: QMI Agency
Jan. 24, 2013

(Nick Lypaczewski/QMI Agency)

It's never too late to quit smoking, but if you quit before you're 40, the health risks will be nearly the same as if you had never smoked at all, new research suggests.

"Quitting smoking before age 40, and preferably well before 40, gives back almost all of the decade of lost life from continued smoking," lead researcher Prabhat Jha said. "That's not to say, however, that it is safe to smoke until you are 40 and then stop. Former smokers still have a greater risk of dying sooner than people who never smoked. But the risk is small compared to the huge risk for those who continue to smoke."

In the study, Jha and his colleagues from the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital looked at smoking and smoking-cessation histories of 113,752 women and 88,496 men aged 25 or older who were interviewed for the U.S. National Health Interview Survey between 1997 and 2004. The smoking data was compared to the causes of deaths that occurred by the end of 2006.

The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that smokers who quit between the ages of 25 and 34 gained about a decade of life, and those who quit between the ages of 35 to 44 gained about nine years.

Smokers who quit between the ages of 45 and 54, and 55 and 64, gained back about six and four years of life, respectively.

 

View more news