Say goodbye to smoking in 2025: This is how much a single cigarette can shorten your life expectancy according to UK experts

It is recommended to never begin smoking due to the numerous health harms associated with it. However, for those that are already hooked on the habit, new research out of the United Kingdom may give you the impetus to follow through on your New Year’s resolution to quit, or make it one this year.

Researchers at University College London, looking at mortality data from the British Doctors Study and the Million Women Study, were able to quantify how much on average each cigarette steals from a person’s life expectancy. “Stopping smoking is, without a doubt, the best thing you can do for your health,” Dr. Sarah Jackson, lead author of the paper and principal research fellow in the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group, told CNN. “And the sooner you stop smoking, the longer you’ll live.”

Each nic fix slashs around 20 minutes off your life

The study, which was commissioned by the UK Department for Health and Social Care, found that even after accounting for socioeconomic status and other factors, each cigarette on average reduced life expectancy by roughly 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women according to their estimates. “20 cigarettes at 20 minutes per cigarette works out to be almost seven hours of life lost per pack,” noted Dr. Jackson.

Over a lifetime, smokers who did not stop smoking lost around 10 years, for men, and 11 years, for women, of life expectancy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found similar life expectancy reduction of at least 10 years for smokers compared to nonsmokers. “Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%,” states the CDC.

However, it should be noted that “with smoking, it doesn’t eat into the later period of your life that tends to be lived in poorer health. Rather, it seems to erode some relatively healthier section in the middle of life,” said Dr Jackson.

Those who quit by their early 30s or preferably younger “tend to have a similar life expectancy to people who have never smoked,” she said. However, the harmful effects of smoking appear to be cumulative according to the new data. “As you get older, you progressively lose a little bit more that you then can’t regain by quitting,” Dr. Jackson said.

“But no matter how old you are when you quit, you will always have a longer life expectancy than if you had continued to smoke,” she added. “So, in effect, while you may not be reversing the life lost already, you’re preventing further loss of life expectancy.”

Avoid losing 50 days of life in 2025

The researchers gave an example of just how much time you could avoid losing from your life expectancy by quitting smoking at the start of the year in an editorial published in the journal Addiction:

“A person smoking 10 cigarettes per day who quits smoking on the 1st of January 2025 could prevent loss of a full day of life by the 8th of January, a week of life by the 20th of February, and a month by the 5th of August. By the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life,” explained the researchers.

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