Researchers find that a single cigarette will take about 20 minutes off a person’s life
A new assessment of the harms of smoking shows cigarettes shorten life expectancy even more than doctors thought in the past.
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Researchers from University College London state that a single cigarette, on average, will extract about 20 minutes off of a person’s life — – 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women.
Translated that means a typical pack of 20 smokes will abbreviate a human life by nearly seven hours.
The flip-side good news for smokers, say the research team, is that a 10-a-day habit broken on New Year’s Day will mean gaining a full day by January 8. That life expectancy boost could extend to a week if you stay off the smokes until February 5, and a whole month if you’re smoke-free until August 5.
Even better, if you stick it out until the end of the year, you could gain 50 days of life, the researchers found.
Dr. Jackson emphasizes that the life expectancy cut is not by definition the end of life when most people experience chronic illness or disability anyway.
“Smoking doesn’t cut short the unhealthy period at the end of life,” Jackson told the Guardian. “It primarily eats into the relatively healthy years in midlife, bringing forward the onset of ill-health. This means a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.”
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