An English study estimated the life expectancy lost due to cigarettes. The results are worrying.
Smoking kills, it is well known. But do you know how much life time is lost with just one cigarette? To find out, a study was commissioned by the British Ministry of Health and carried out by University College London. The results, published this Monday, December 30 in the journal Addictionare more worrying than what was estimated until now. A cigarette smoked would take away around 20 minutes of life expectancy. This is twice as much as previous studies had concluded. For each pack of cigarettes smoked, seven hours of life would be lost. Ultimately, in one year, a person who smokes 10 cigarettes per day would lose 50 days of life expectancy. The finding is all the more serious for women, who lose 22 minutes of life per cigarette smoked, compared to 17 for men. “A time that would probably have been spent in relatively good health,” insist the authors of the study.
“Most smokers are aware that smoking can shorten their lives, but not of the impact of each cigarette they smoke,” according to the study authors. Especially since the negative effects are cumulative with each cigarette smoked: “The damage caused by smoking is cumulative. The sooner the person stops and the more they avoid smoking cigarettes, the longer they live,” they point out. .
Tobacco can in fact cause many diseases: lung cancer, heart disease, diabetes, strokes… Diseases that can be avoided by stopping smoking as soon as possible. “Stopping smoking at any age significantly improves health and the benefits are almost immediate,” recalled British Minister of Public Health Andrew Gwynne in a UK Department of Health press release.
In France, nearly 12 million people smoke every day. According to the Léon Bérard cancer center“each year, 75,000 deaths are attributable to tobacco (i.e. 13% of all deaths occurring in France), including 45,000 deaths from cancer. Tobacco therefore constitutes the leading preventable risk factor for cancer”. Many reasons to make the resolution to quit smoking in 2025!