 According to a 50-year study conducted by scientists, cigarette smokers can halve the risk of dying prematurely by quitting, even if they quit at 50 years of age. If people quit smoking by the age of 30, they can avoid nearly all of the risk of dying prematurely.
"Cigarette smoking reduces the expectation of life by 10 years" said 91-year-old Oxford University Professor Sir Richard Doll, who discovered the link between cancer and smoking. "It is clear that consistent cigarette smoking doubles mortality throughout adult life, middle and old age. "It is also clear that giving up smoking can eliminate a very large part of the hazard."
Sir Richard and Bradford Hill confirmed the link between smoking and lung cancer in a landmark study published in the British Medical Journal on June 26, 1954. Fifty years later, they reported the results of their 50-year study. "I gave up smoking at age 37 when I saw the results of our first study," said Richard Doll. The early results from his second study confirmed that smoking causes lung cancer and suggested that it also causes heart disease. "We thought we'd better carry the study on for a lot longer and see if smoking causes anything else and by goodness it does, Sir Richard Doll said. "By the time we did the 40-year follow-up, we found there were some 25 diseases which smoking seemed to cause and that the mortality was about double with the consistency of smoking."
Fifty-year results confirmed the earlier findings and also showed that among men born in the 1920s who became persistent smokers, about two-thirds died from their habit. "These men who were born in the 1920s and went into the army in the Second World War became serious cigarette smokers from the age of 18 in a way no previous generation had ever done. Among those who continued about two thirds get killed by it," said Sir Richard Peto, who has worked with Sir Richard Doll for 30 years.
Since Sir Richard Doll began the study five decades ago, tobacco has killed about 100 million people worldwide.
Source: ABC Online
Read our article on high blood pressure, another lifestyle factor that if combined with smoking greatly increases health risk.
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