(Medical News Today) Women Who Quit Smoking By Age 30 Evade Early Death
Smoking increases a person's risk of dying early. Now a new UK study of 1 million women finds those who quit smoking by age 30 can almost completely eliminate the increased risk of dying early compared to never smokers, while those who quit by the age of 40, can cut it by 90%.
A paper on the largest-ever study of smoking among women in the UK, written by researchers at the University of Oxford on behalf of the Million Women Study Collaborators, is published on 27 October in The Lancet.
Risks of Smoking and Benefits of Quitting Bigger than Previously Thought
The most important result of this new study is that the risks posed by smoking are bigger than previous research suggests, and, quitting smoking has a bigger effect on reducing those risks than previously thought.
The researchers found that female smokers in the UK die about 10 years earlier on average than never smokers. But by giving up the habit before the age of 40, and preferably well before then, they can cut more than 90% off the risk of losing those 10 years.
Their analysis shows that most of the difference between smokers and non-smokers, as far as cause of death is concerned, is smoking-related.