Eunbong Lee, professor of internal medicine at Seoul National University Hospital
Citizens are smoking in a smoking area in Seoul./News 1
Half of people who smoke die from smoking-related diseases. These include cardiovascular disease, various cancers such as lung cancer and esophageal cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Quitting smoking can reduce the excess mortality caused by smoking, but it was not well known when and how much the mortality rate decreases for each disease. A study on this was recently published in the Internal Medicine section of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study targeted 438,015 healthy Americans who had smoked for more than five years. After they quit smoking, we compared and analyzed how mortality rates from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease changed with those of people who continued to smoke and non-smokers over 30 years.
During the follow-up period, 11,860 people died from cardiovascular disease, 10,935 from cancer, and 2,060 from respiratory disease. Compared to non-smokers, those who continued to smoke were 2.3 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, 3.4 times more likely to have cancer, and 13.3 times more likely to have respiratory disease.
However, within 10 years of quitting smoking, excess mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease fell by 64%, 53%, and 57%. After 20 years, the death rate from cardiovascular disease became similar to that of non-smokers, and after 30 years, the death rate from cancer and respiratory disease became similar to that of non-smokers.
Smoking causes oxidative stress in blood vessels and damages vascular endothelial cells, causing arteriosclerosis. Cigarette smoke contains various carcinogens. Quitting smoking can significantly lower your risk of smoking-related diseases, but it takes more than 20 years to reach the level of a non-smoker. It is best not to start smoking at all, and if you are currently smoking, you must quit as soon as possible to enjoy the maximum effect of quitting smoking.
2023-12-20 11:31:56
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