A new study warns that each cigarette costs you 20 minutes of your life

Here’s some extra motivation for anyone looking to quit smoking as part of their New Year’s resolutions. Research published this week found that each cigarette you smoke will shorten your life by nearly half an hour.

Scientists at University College London conducted the study, which is an update on a previous estimate of how cigarette smoking affects lives. Based on more recent data, they found that one cigarette would shave about twenty minutes off the average person’s life. Researchers say that the results confirm the importance of quitting smoking as soon as possible.

Many studies and tragic stories have confirmed this The danger of smoking cigarettes. Smoking can damage almost every organ and increase the risk of life-threatening health problems such as emphysema, heart disease, and cancer of the lungs and mouth, to name a few. But researchers at UCLA wanted to better determine how much smoking harms our lives using the latest data available.

2000 study of British smokers estimated Each cigarette costs a person about 11 minutes of their life on average. However, this estimate relied on assumptions derived from data on men alone, such as studies that tracked the average age of male smokers at death compared to nonsmokers. This time, the UCLA researchers were able to analyze data from women smokers in the UK as well. They also analyzed more recent data on deaths in British men along with data on how many daily cigarettes people smoke today on average.

Overall, after adjusting for other factors such as a person’s wealth, the researchers estimated that people who never stopped smoking lost about 10 to 11 years of life expectancy compared to a nonsmoker, higher than the previous estimate of 6.5 years of life lost. They also estimated that each cigarette costs 20 minutes of life on average, 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women.

The researchers point out that most of these stolen minutes are taken from a person’s middle and healthier years, rather than at the end of their life. In other words, smokers are likely to experience the usual health problems related to aging for the same amount of time but reach that stage sooner. For example, researchers highlighted that a 60-year-old lifelong smoker would be expected to have typical health for a 70-year-old nonsmoker.

“This is the time we are likely to spend in relatively good health,” the researchers wrote in their paper. published Sunday in the magazine addicted.

The results still depend on some assumptions about the harms of cigarette smoking, which are not distributed equally among everyone. For example, not every smoker will get lung cancer. Cigarettes these days also contain less tar than they used to Decades agoTherefore, smokers today may be exposed to fewer toxins than before. However, cigarettes do not appear to be “low tar” as well Much less people Risk of cancer or other problems (one reason is that smokers often take larger puffs to get more nicotine).

Fortunately, people in general are smoking less than ever before, which has helped reduce cancer cases and deaths. But smoking and passive smoking Still appreciated To help cause nearly half a million deaths in the United States alone each year. Although the damage from smoking may permanently shorten your life, it’s still beneficial to quit smoking no matter your age, researchers say. But the sooner you stop, the better off you’ll be.

“Smoking cessation at all ages is beneficial, but the sooner smokers get off the spiraling ladder of death, the longer and healthier they can expect to live,” they wrote.