A single cigarette slashes 20 minutes off your life expectancy, UK research suggests

For people whose new year resolution is to quit smoking, doing so can add years to your life expectancy.

If you’re thinking about making a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, it might help to know that new research says it could extend your life expectancy. Each cigarette someone smokes, on average, can take about 20 minutes off their life expectancy overall, according to new research based on British smokers. After accounting for socioeconomic status and other factors, researchers at University College London estimated the loss of life expectancy per cigarette at about 17 minutes for men and 22 for women, they wrote in an editorial published Sunday in the journal Addiction. That means if someone smokes a pack of 20 cigarettes per day, “20 cigarettes at 20 minutes per cigarette works out to be almost seven hours of life lost per pack,” said Dr. Sarah Jackson, a principal research fellow in the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group and lead author of the paper. “The time they’re losing is time that they could be spending with their loved ones in fairly good health,” Jackson said. “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,” she said. “So when we’re talking about loss of life expectancy, life expectancy would tend to be lived in relatively good health.”