{"id":9221,"date":"2016-11-30T05:02:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T05:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2016\/11\/30\/its-never-too-late-to-quit-smoking-even-in-your-60s\/"},"modified":"2016-11-30T05:02:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T05:02:14","slug":"its-never-too-late-to-quit-smoking-even-in-your-60s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/its-never-too-late-to-quit-smoking-even-in-your-60s\/","title":{"rendered":"It's Never Too Late to Quit Smoking, Even In Your 60s"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Katherine Hobson<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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One more coffee, one more cigarette. One more morning, trying to forget. Bob Thomas\/Getty Images<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bob Thomas\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Older people who smoke may think there’s no reason to give up the habit. After all, hasn’t the damage to their bodies already been done?<\/p>\n

But it turns out there’s a benefit to quitting even later in life. Research<\/a> published Wednesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine<\/em> finds that older adults who quit smoking in their 60s had a lower chance of dying in the years that followed than contemporaries who kept smoking.<\/p>\n

“It’s never too late,” says Sarah Nash, an epidemiologist and one of the study’s authors.<\/p>\n

The results are based on data from more than 160,000 participants older than 70 who were part of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study<\/a>. Participants completed questionnaires about their smoking history in 2004 or 2005 and were tracked until the end of 2011 to see who had died.<\/p>\n

The study found that it’s definitely best to avoid smoking entirely. During the follow-up period, 12 percent of participants who never smoked died, compared to 33 percent of current smokers. And the earlier people quit the better, but there was still a benefit even for late quitters. Of those who quit in their 30s, 16 percent died. In their 40s: 20 percent. In their 50s: 24 percent. And in their 60s: 28 percent.<\/p>\n

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