Stopping is still useful!

Smoking is bad for you, that is well known. In fact, every cigarette you smoke shortens your final lifespan. However, when you tell this to smokers, one always comes up with a comment like: 'My grandmother has turned 90 years old while she smoked a pack a day.' Very nice for his or her grandmother of course, but unfortunately this is only anecdotal evidence. Very clear conclusions can be drawn from figures from a study by Statistics Netherlands and the Trimbos Institute. We assume that you do not smoke with your sports body anyway, but do you and do you not really see the reason to quit? Then we hope that this will convince you.

Smokers die earlier

Guys, let's get rid of that 90+ grandma's argument with a butt in the corner of her mouth. If you smoke, you die earlier. If she hadn't smoked, that grandma might have been well over 100! The figures from Statistics Netherlands show that a quarter of the heavy smokers ( gt; 20 cigarettes a day) will not reach the retirement age of 65. For moderate smokers (fewer than 20 cigarettes per day) this applies to one in five. Even for people who only occasionally smoke, for example only at parties at the weekend, almost twice as many smokers than non-smokers do not reach 65. The life expectancy of heavy smokers is 13 years less than that of non-smokers, moderate smokers give up nine years and even light smokers live five years less.

Main cause of young deaths

Why is it that smokers die sooner than non-smokers? It will not surprise you that in smokers, lung cancer is a common disease. Respiratory diseases such as COPD and cardiovascular diseases are also much more common in this group. It is estimated that about one in ten heavy smokers die at a young age from cancer, five percent from lung cancer and another 5 percent from cardiovascular disease. To us it seems impressive enough, but the following statistic is totally alarming: the research shows that 40% of all deaths under the age of 80 are caused by tobacco.

It is not too late yet

We can already hear you thinking: 'What a depressing article, didn't anything good come out of the research ?!' No, we also have good news. Stopping really makes sense. Ex-smokers who quit before the age of 35 have a similar life expectancy as non-smokers. Of smokers who are around 50, the mortality risk is halved.

ll in all it seems to us that you have enough reasons to quit. With this I myself will try to stop.