But Long Term Respiratory Damage Can Take Years To ShedChicago (eCanadaNow) - Women who quit smoking realize an immediate benefit to their health, which occurs swiftly after they quit within the first 5 years after quitting smoking.
But the long-term effects of years of smoking are slower to be healed and erased.
Those women who had stopped smoking had an immediate 13 percent drop in risk for death from all different causes, including vascular and heart problems. After a time period of 20 years the risks across the board for former smokers who had quit 20 years previously was the same as those women who had not ever smoked.
It takes up to 20 years for the long-term effects of smoking to be shed and healed in the body, according to a new Harvard studies report issued Tuesday.
More than 121 thousand women who were in the nursing profession who had their health histories recorded beginning in 1976 and followed for the next 20 years were reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Quitting in itself begins to immediately reduce the mortality and risks for all causes of death,” said researchers with Harvard School of Public Health, authors of the new study.
Women who had started smoking later in life had a much lower risk of heart and lung disease, than those who started smoking young, but anyone who had smoked at all was at increased risk, according to the report.
