Scientists have calculated the age limit for quitting smoking and having no more risk of additional mortality than non-smokers. Before what age is it better to quit smoking?
Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death in France, with 75,000 annual deaths in France following the inhalation of 400 toxic substances contained in a single cigarette. But prevention campaigns on the risks of tobacco work, according to Public Health France: the number of smokers per day has increased from 29% in 2016 to 25.5% in 2020, with 30% who have already tried to quit this year. -the.
Is there a good time to quit smoking without suffering the consequences of this addiction all your life? An international research group has calculated the relative risk of dying, whatever the cause, according to the age at which smoking is stopped and has defined a minimum age where this risk is equal to that of non- smokers.
The ideal age to quit smoking
The earlier a smoker quits smoking, the more he protects his health. Indeed, scientists have calculated that a person who quit smoking before the age of 35 has no greater relative risk of dying than a non-smoker (a risk of 1.03 to 1 for non-smokers who serve as a reference). On the other hand, if this decision is postponed between the ages of 35 and 45, the relative risk of mortality from any cause increases by 21%, by 47% for people who stop smoking between the ages of 45 and 54 and by 74% for those who stop between 55 and 64 years old.
These calculations are based on data from 500,000 people collected between 1998 and 2018 on men and women of various ethnic origins, aged between 18 and 84 at the start of the collection. At the end of these 20 years, 75,000 of them have died, smokers or not. But the figures show that smokers were more likely to die from any cause than non-smokers; they were also more exposed to diseases intimately linked to their tobacco consumption, such as cancer, heart disease and lung disease.
If you quit smoking before (…)
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