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Is there an “ideal” age to quit smoking? A team of English, American and Malaysian scientists asked themselves the question. They published their findings in the journal Jama Network Open on October 24.
What is the ideal age to quit smoking? The ideal would of course be never to start, but as perfection is not possible to achieve, let’s stay in reality. At what point, therefore, should we stop smoking in order to maintain a mortality rate close to that of non-smokers?
A cohort of more than 500,000 people
Scientists collected data from 551,388 volunteers aged between 25 and 84 to find the answer to this question. These data, from the US National Health Interview Survey – a questionnaire-based health survey conducted annually among the non-institutionalized US civilian population – were collected between January 1997 and December 2018.
A follow-up of more than 20 years
The volunteers were chosen to represent a diversity of profiles, gender and ethnic origins. Regarding tobacco consumption, some people used it regularly, others had stopped during the study, and a final part had never smoked. Finally, more than 74,000 deaths have been recorded during the 21 years of data collection.
Before age 35 to limit the impact
According to the results of scientists, quitting smoking at 45 “was associated with reductions of around 90% in excess mortality associated with continued smoking and quitting between ages 45 and 64 was associated with reductions of around 66% in this excess risk”.
It is therefore younger that it is necessary to stop. And that threshold was set much lower. “Quitting smoking at age 35 leads to an all-cause mortality rate almost similar to that of individuals who have never touched a cigarette” say the researchers, especially for people who started smoking young.
75,000 deaths every year
Tobacco remains one of the leading causes of preventable death. In fact, every year in France, 75,000 people die from tobacco.
Cancers are the most frequent causes of death attributable to smoking with more than 45,000 deaths. Cardiovascular diseases account for more than 17,000 tobacco-attributable deaths.
The findings of this study, while they won’t stop people from smoking, should at least motivate them to set a goal to quit as soon as possible. Overall however, it is beneficial to quit as soon as possible, but whatever your age, quitting smoking is still beneficial for your health.