The next time it feels like cigarette time, think about this fact before you take a puff: a single cigarette can potentially steal 20 minutes of your life expectancy. And the life that you do have left, is likely to be less healthy than it would be if you did not smoke. Researchers from University College London, arrived at this metric based on data from male and female mortality outcomes in the U.
K., and in following up an older study from 2000. There are a number of caveats to this of course, including type of cigarette smoked, individual susceptibility, age of initiation etc, the researchers note.
Smoking has, for long, been associated with a number of health risks: it is, in fact, the common risk factor when it comes to five of the top 10 causes of mortality in the world as of 2021. According to the World Health Organization, these include ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lower respiratory infections and trachea, bronchus and lung cancers. And yet, as per the National Family Health Survey - 5, 38% of men and nearly 9% of women in India over the age of 15 used tobacco.
The WHO estimates that tobacco is one of the major causes of death and disease, in India and accounts for over 1 million deaths every year. What does smoking do to your body? If you think that an occasional cigarette does no harm and that it is only chain smokers who can get into trouble health-wise, think again. Smoked tobacco products contain over 7,000 chemical.
