As shown by a recent study, smokers who quit Smoking at a young age, can live almost as long as never smoked people.

Although it is believed that Smoking reduces life expectancy by at least 10 years, a recent analysis of researchers from the hospital of St. Michael in Toronto shows that people who quit Smoking before the age of 40, and regain years, which could lose.

"The most important is that quitting Smoking is working, said in an interview with CTV News research Director Dr. Prabhat JHA, a cessation of Smoking at a young age, even up to 40 years - will neutralize about 90 percent of risk associated with continued Smoking.

"And this risk is great. Smokers are at loss of the whole decade of life, ten years of good life."

Head of the center for global research in health JHA heads the group that studied the medical records from the National survey on health. The group also analysed the data for 16 000 deaths from the National registry of mortality, which, according to the records, smoked during life.

They found that people who had never smoked, twice as likely to have reached 80 years of age compared with smokers.

But they also found that people who quit Smoking at the age from 35 to 44 years, was able to return about nine years of life. Those who threw between 45-54 years and 55-64 years, were, respectively, six and four years of life. JHA said that from the received his group results should not be conclude that it is safe to smoke up to 40 years and then stop. People have previously smoked, the risk of an earlier death above, he says.

But this risk is small compared with the huge risk taken on by those who continue to smoke. Many smokers believe that if they have already been Smoking for ten years or more, throw too late.

JHA says that it is not so. "Quit Smoking at any age, you have an advantage, but especially if you make it to 40 years of age, in this case, life expectancy is almost like I never smoked," he says. Ja

explains that some factors from the past smoker continue to have an impact, but not all. For example, former smokers there is a high risk of lung cancer compared with never smoked, though of course, he is not as high as that of continuing to smoke.

But in regard to other causes of death, for example, a sudden heart attack, the effects from Smoking over time erased. "You can still get a sharp narrowing of the artery, if you are a smoker, and this will cause a heart attack. But if you stop Smoking, this risk is almost disappears. That is, it depends on the disease," says JHA.

This study also one of the first gave an assessment of mortality for a generation of women who started Smoking at a young age and continued into his adulthood. According to the research of the 1980-ies the risk for these women was considered small, but the analysis showed that women who continued to smoke, also lose about ten years of life. "In principle, if a woman smokes like a man, she dies in the same age as men, " says JHA. - And it means the loss of ten years. Not a few years, and a decade - 10 years of healthy life".

The study was funded by the National Institute of health, the Canadian Institute of research in the field of health and project Priorities for disease control-3" bill & Melinda gates Foundation. The results will be published in the next issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.