Lung Cancer Living with Lung Cancer

It's Never Too Late to Quit

Today, few, if any, smokers are unaware of the harm their habit is inflicting on their bodies. But not all of them may be aware that quitting at any age can help reduce their risk of lung cancer and other smoking-related illness as well as improve the quality of that life.

In the June 2004 issue of Health Services Research a report was published that analyzed the data from two studies involving more than 20,000 men and women over the age of 50. The participants were interviewed about their smoking habits as well as their physical, emotional and social health. The study researchers, of Duke University Medical Center, found that heavy smokers aged 50 to 54 were less healthy and had shorter lives. In terms of both disability and lifespan males who were still heavy smokers lost about two years when compared to non-smokers and women lost about a year. In contrast, researchers found that the people who quit smoking between the ages of 35 and 45 had lived as long and in as good health as people who had not smoked.

"Messages concerning the effect of smoking on disability and quality of life may be more likely to invoke changes in smoking behavior than are messages about loss of life years," the study authors wrote.

More positive news comes from a 50-year study following 34,439 male doctors published in 2004. In the British Medical Journal researchers found that when people quit smoking by age 30 it reduced almost all risk associated with smoking. Also that quitting by age 50 cut risk in half.

"The findings of the benefit of giving up at different ages were not surprising for us," says lead author Sir Richard Doll, an emeritus professor of medicine at Oxford University in England, who published the first paper confirming the link between smoking and lung cancer. "But we had not previously shown them so clearly."

The British study also found that smoking from youth nearly triples the death rate from all causes, including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease and stroke. "Regular cigarette smoking deprives people, on average, of 10 years of life," Doll says. "Some people, of course, losing much more and other less."

The heartening news for smokers, however, is that it’s never too late to achieve health benefits from quitting.