NATIONAL POST – A new assessment of the harms of smoking shows cigarettes shorten life expectancy even more than doctors thought in the past.
Researchers from University College London state that a single cigarette, on average, will extract about 20 minutes off of a person’s life – 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women.
Translated that means a typical pack of 20 smokes will abbreviate a human life by nearly seven hours.
The flip-side good news for smokers, say the research team, is that a 10-a-day habit broken on New Year’s Day will mean gaining a full day by January 8.
That life expectancy boost could extend to a week if you stay off the smokes until February 5, and a whole month if you’re smoke-free until August 5.
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Even better, if you stick it out until the end of the year, you could gain 50 days of life, the researchers found.
“People generally know that smoking is harmful but tend to underestimate just how much,” said Dr. Sarah Jackson, a principal research fellow at UCL’s alcohol and tobacco research group told the Guardian.
“On average, smokers who don’t quit lose around a decade of life. That’s 10 years of precious time, life moments, and milestones with loved ones.”
Health authorities agree that smoking is one of the world’s leading preventable causes of disease and death. A long history of cumulative data shows that smoking kills up to two-thirds of long-term users.
Smoking also contributes to several health issues including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, dementia and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) …
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