It helps even if you quit smoking in your 60s, study says

It does not matter when you quit smoking because whenever you will leave this bad habit at any age you will get immense health benefits and better life so it is never too late.

Even a study has also confirmed that smoker can improve their life expectancy even they quit smoking tobacco at the age of 60s. This research was done at National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US which included people aged 70 or older and were currently smoking were more likely to die than people who never smoke.

In this research data of more than 160,000 individuals aged 70 and over from the NIH –AARP diet and Health study was reviewed.

In 2004 and 2005 questionnaires detailing about their smoking use were filled and reported deaths were tracked until the end of 2011.

Further in this study participants still smoking in their 70’s were identified as current smokers, and former smokers were classified by the decade of life when quitting. The median age was 75 at the beginning of the research study and 56% participants were former smokers and 6% were current smokers. And males were less likely to be never smokers as males smoked more than females and males were more likely to started smoking before the age of 15 years.

So it was observed in the study that and average follow-up of 6.4 years, almost 16% of the participants died. While 12.1% of the never smokers died, 16.2 per cent, 19.7 per cent, 23.9 per cent and 27.9 per cent of former smokers who quit between ages 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60-69 years died.

The death rate of current smokers was 13.1% and the mortality rates for women were lower than men at each level of smoking.

This study finally concludes that smoking initiation and cessation both are the key components of smoking duration, are important predictors of mortality in adults aged 70 years and older.