Impact of Smoking on Your Lifespan
By: Gretchen Bolander
Updated: February 21, 2013
Recent studies have shown that smokers are much more likely to die five or even ten years earlier than non-smokers.
"What we find is that smokers have more cardiovascular disease than non smokers." Maybe not a surprise to most of us, but researchers have confirmed a link between smoking and the risk of a shorter lifespan, according to Freeman Cardiologist Ryan Longnecker. "Even after stopping at age 55, there was 6 years of life gained. And that's a scary thought realistically, if you look at a 30 who smokes now and women on average lost 11 years of their life, men lost 12 years of their life."
Dr. Longnecker says cardiovascular risk is connected to the impact smoke has on blood vessels and even blood cells. "It actually makes the bad cholesterol numbers higher and the good cholesterol numbers lower. You take those cholesterol numbers and mess it up and then you make the cholesterol itself to where it's sticky also. And you take sticky cholesterol and sticky platelets and it starts causing the vessels to narrow as they hit the wall." It's a blockage just waiting to happen. And that's just in the circulatory system. "But lung cancer scares me just as much and strokes are very high on the risks of things that can happen with smoking."
