Recent studies show that women can increase their life expectancy by up to 10 years if they stop smoking before reaching middle age.
A study of over 1,3 million women has shown that quitting the addiction before the age of 90 is associated with avoiding over 10%. risk of dying from smoking-related diseases. In smokers, increased mortality has been associated with diseases such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and stroke. The risk increases sharply with the amount of tobacco smoked, but even smokers less, up to XNUMX units a day, double the risk of death. The above analysis is based on the Million Women Study project and published in the medical journal The Lancet to mark the XNUMXth birthday of Sir Richard Doll, one of the first to discover a link between smoking and lung cancer.
A total of 1996 million women aged between 2001 and 1,3 were recruited for the project between 50 and 65. They completed a questionnaire on lifestyle, medical history and environmental and social factors. After three years, they filled out another questionnaire. The central registry of the state health service informed researchers if any of the participants died, stating the cause of death. On average, the lives of women were followed for 12 years from the moment they applied. 66 participants have died so far.
Initially, 20 percent. ladies were smokers, 28 percent smoked in the past, and 52 percent. – never. Women who revealed that they continued smoking in a second survey three years later had a three-fold higher risk of dying over the next nine years than non-smokers – even if they had reduced the amount of cigarettes they smoked during that period.
According to the authors, the most important finding by them is that the risks of smoking – and, accordingly, the benefits of not smoking – are greater than previously thought. Smokers who quit smoking around the age of 30 managed to avoid 97% of their addiction. increased risk of premature death. And while the risk remained elevated for decades in women who smoked up to XNUMX, it was ten times higher in those still smoking in their forties.
“A smoker who quits before forty will statistically gain 10 extra years to live,” says Professor Richard Peto of the University of Oxford, one of the authors of the study. – In both Great Britain and the United States, women born around 1940 were the first generation to smoke large amounts of cigarettes throughout their adult lives. Hence, it is not until the XNUMXst century that we can see the full effects of long-term smoking – as well as quitting – on female mortality rates.
‘Smoking among young women peaked in the 60s in most European countries and America, which is decades later than men,’ adds Professor Rachel Huxley of the University of Minnesota. – Earlier studies did not fully address the impact of smoking on female mortality due to the long time since smoking initiation and associated diseases in middle age or old age.
Test: Martin Barrow