Paula Wolfson, wtop.com WASHINGTON - A new study shows that
longtime smokers lose about 10 years of lives, but smokers who
quit early enough can get almost all of those years back.
Researchers tracked government health data on more than 200,000
Americans that was compiled between 1997 and 2004. They then
studied death records in 2006 and found that almost 16,000 of
the participants had died, and that smokers were roughly three
times more likely to have died than non-smokers. The researchers
then took all these numbers and calculated the impact smoking
has on mortality over time. The study, which was published in
the New England Journal of Medicine, also has good news for
smokers for quit. The study shows that smokers who kick the
habit between the ages of 25 and 34 reclaim almost all of the 10
years they might have lost. Those who stopped between 35 and 44
regained nine years. And those who quit much later, between 45
and 64, got back between four and six years of their lives. The
authors of the study include