Smoking Study

Smoking Study

CIGARETTES ROB SMOKERS OF 10 YEARS OF LIFE

A 50 YEAR STUDY!

June 22, 2004 Reuters

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON(Reuters). Cigarette smokers die on average 10 years earlier than non-smokers, but kicking the habit, even at 50 years old, can halve the risk, according to half a century of research reported on Tuesday.

Findings from a 50-year study into the dangers of smoking showed that if people quit by the age of 30 they can avoid nearly all of the risk of dying prematurely.

“Cigarette smoking reduces the expectation of life by 10 years,” said 91-year-old Oxford University Professor Richard Doll, who first confirmed the link between cancer and smoking.

“It is clear that consistent cigarette smoking doubles mortality throughout adult life—middle and old age. It is also clear that giving up smoking can eliminate a very large part of the hazard,” he told Reuters.

Professor Doll and Bradford Hill confirmed the link between smoking and lung cancer in a landmark study published in the British Medical Journal on June 26, 1954.

Half a century later, Doll and Oxford University Professor Richard Peto report the 50-year results in the journal from the same study of 34,439 British doctors.

“This study is a remarkable achievement. Studies that last 50 years are highly unusual in medicine, and it’s even more unusual for one to have an author who was there at the beginning and after 50 years,” the journal’s editor Dr Richard Smith told a news conference. “It has taught us a great deal,” he added.

Doll, who had smoked for 19 years before giving it up, had planned only a five-year project but the initial findings were so intriguing he carried on for five decades. “I gave up smoking g at age 37 when I saw the results of our first study. They were quite convincing to me,” he said in an interview.

The early results from his second study confirmed that smoking causes lung cancer and suggested that it also causes heart disease.

“We thought we’d better carry on the study for a lot longer and see if smoking causes anything else…and by goodness it does,” said Doll.

“By the time we did the 40-year follow up, we found there were some 25 diseases that smoking seemed to cause, and that the mortality was about double with consistent smoking.”

Fifty-year results showed that two-thirds of men who became persistent smokers died from their habit.

“Nobody has ever before seen a population in which two-thirds of the smokers get killed by their habit,” said Peto, who worked with Doll for 30 years.

Since Doll began the study five decades ago, tobacco has already killed 100 million people worldwide. Peto estimates there will be approximately one billion tobacco deaths during the present century, if current smoking patterns continue.

“Smoking kills people,” Peto said. “And stopping works.”

************************

If you’ve tried to quit smoking, you know how difficult it can be. Our professional hypnotherapists can assist you in the fight for your life. We know how to get you the results you need. Call us today for complete details.