United States: Smokers are being urged to quit in 2025 after new research showed that smoking can shorten life expectancy more than doctors previously thought. Researchers at University College London found that each cigarette takes about 20 minutes off a person’s life, meaning a pack of 20 cigarettes can shorten life by nearly seven hours.
As found in the analysis, if a smoker consumes 10 cigarettes a day on New Year’s Day, they could have gained an additional day in their life by refraining from smoking on 1st January to 7th January. They could add a week to their life if they quit until the 5 February and one month if they stop until 5 August.
They could have saved 50 days of life by the end of the year had they not let themselves get so sloppy, the assessment concluded.
As reported by theguardian. com, “While people have a broad understanding that smoking is unhealthy to some degree, they do not often fully appreciate the extent of this harm,” said Dr Sarah Jackson a principal research fellow at the alcohol and tobacco research group at university college London.
It turns out that the smokers who never give up cigarettes are already a decade behind the population on average. I think to lose that is 10 years of memories, life experiences and celebrating occasions with our loved ones.”
Tobacco use remains one of the greatest killers globally that is world’s leading preventable cause of death, contributing to up to two thirds of death among the regular users. Every year it costs about 80,000 deaths in UK and contributing quarter of total cancer deaths in England.
The survey was conducted for the Department of Health using information from the British Doctors Study conducted in early 1950s, as one of the first studies of its kind that studied the impact of smoking, and the Million Women Study that began in 1996.
A last study carried in the BMJ in year 2000 points out that on average, a single cigarette tends to shave consumers’ life expectancy by about 11 minutes, but in the Journal of Addiction this is nearly doubled to arrive at 20 minutes – or 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women.
Some people might believe they don’t mind dying early because old age is synonymous with sickness or disability.