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PEOPLE who give up smoking begin to improve their health almost immediately, according to a study of more than 100,000 women carried out between 1980 and 2004.
Within five years the risk of death from all causes fell by 13 per cent, it found. By 20 years, people had no extra risk of death because of their past smoking history.
The study, by researchers at Harvard medical school in Boston, also highlights the benefits of not starting smoking until later; women who began at 17 were 22 per cent more likely to die within the study period than those who started at 26 or older.
The news will encourage the estimated third of smokers who would like to give up the habit, health officials and supporters of the Bahraini government's controversial move to ban smoking in malls. Notices have been placed on the entrances of all shopping centres urging people to abide by the policy.
Authorities in the kingdom are planning to tighten the noose and enforce new anti-smoking laws in public places in a determined effort to make the island a healthier and more pleasant place to live in and visit.
Offenders and owners of premises are likely to face stiff penalties and full details of the crackdown will be announced later this year when restaurants and eating areas in hotels will have to ensure they provide smoke-free areas.
According to the Ministry of Health, the numbers of adult smokers has risen alarmingly in recent months to almost 30 per cent of the adult population, as recently highlighted in GulfWeekly.
The new study used data from the so-called Nurses Health Study in the United States, which collected health questionnaires from more than 120,000 women aged between 30 and 55 in 11 states from 1976 onwards.
Researchers could link answers to lifestyle questions - for example, about how much they smoked - to information about the volunteers' general health and how they ended up dying. The questionnaires have been repeated every two years, giving researchers an evolving picture of the participants' habits and lives. From this they were able to compare women who had smoked but given up, with women who had never smoked or never given up.
The study confirmed that smoking is a potent cause of disease; 64 per cent of deaths among current smokers could be attributable to cigarettes, and 28 per cent of deaths among former smokers. More heartening for smokers who want to kick the habit is data suggesting that the health benefits of stopping appear quickly. For coronary heart disease, 61 per cent of the full potential benefit from quitting happens in the first five years; for strokes 42 per cent; for lung cancer 21 per cent.
Rates of mortality from respiratory disease, lung cancer and smoking-related cancer were all lower in women who had started smoking later.
"So implementing and maintaining school tobacco prevention programmes, in addition to enforcing youth access laws, are key preventive strategies. Effectively communicating risks to smokers and helping them quit successfully should be an integral part of public health programmes," the authors of the study, Dr Stacey Kenfield and colleagues, wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
