Health News and Information

REDUCING YOUR RISK OF CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE: HEALTH BENEFITS OF QUITTING

From a health perspective, benefits are most obvious if you never begin smoking in the first place. If you do smoke, however, the gains from stopping are enormous. After you quit, the risk of heart disease from smoking drops dramatically within about 2 years. Although your risk probably will never be as low as if you had never smoked, it can certainly approach that level.Researchers have found that if you smoke two packs of cigarettes per day your risk of death from heart disease alone (not considering death from other causes or ill health not resulting in death) is double that if you never smoked. If you stop smoking (and do not resume), the risk of death from heart disease is reduced to 1.3 times what it would have been if you never smoked.Even among relatively older individuals, there is a dramatic advantage to discontinuing cigarette use. For example, if you are older than 50 and stop smoking, the chance of dying from any cause is reduced by one-half during the next 15 years. The risk of dying of heart disease decreases by about 30 percent. Recent studies have shown that smokers older than age 60 could add 5 to 7 years to their lives by quitting. It is never too late to quit.*235\252\8*