Share:
Study smoking significantly lowers the average life expectancy
According to scientists, smoking has a significant impact on the average life expectancy of the entire population. Above all, the changed lifestyle of women is responsible for the reduction or stagnation of life expectancy.
Numerous diseases due to tobacco consumption
Last year it was reported that the life expectancy of Germans has risen to record levels. At the same time, health experts have pointed out that the most common causes of death in this country are still cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack, lung cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, colon cancer and COPD (smoker's lung). So almost all diseases that are triggered or promoted by tobacco use. The fact that smoker behavior has an impact on the average life expectancy of the entire population has now been scientifically proven for the first time. The researchers speak in this context of the "negative side of emancipation".
Smoking has a significant impact on the average life expectancy of the whole population. Researchers speak of a "fatal negative side of emancipation". (Image: All king of people / fotolia.com) Smoking has a significant impact on life expectancy
According to German scientists, tobacco consumption has a significant impact on the average life expectancy of the entire population, reports the news agency dpa. This is the conclusion of a study comparing the Danish population with that of Sweden and Norway. According to Roland Rau from the University of Rostock, life expectancy in Sweden and Norway rose steadily in the 1980s, as in most industrialized countries. In Denmark, on the other hand, it stagnated. "We found that the lifestyle of Danish women born between 1915 and 1945 was responsible for that," Rau told the agency.
"Negative side of emancipation"
It is said that similar effects have been found in the USA as well. For Germany there is therefore no comparable study. Rau, who created the study together with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, explained that previous studies had shown that especially Danish women of this "interwar generation" smoked far more than women in the other two Scandinavian countries. This tendency was particularly noticeable among women born between 1925 and 1934. According to the data, the average difference in life expectancy in 1995 was around 3.5 years to the detriment of Danish women. "This is the fatal negative side of emancipation, that at the beginning of the 1960s, the smoking of women has increased massively," said the Rostock physician Johann Christian Virchow, head of the Department of Pulmonology at the University Hospital.
Late effects of smoking
Scientists from Switzerland and Italy also presented a study last year that showed the impact on the health of the population from the increase in smoking women. According to Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan's medical journal "Annals of Oncology", cancer mortality rates are decreasing, but there will be more lung cancer cases among women in Europe due to the long-term effects of smoking. In the UK, however, a corresponding increase was not expected. The reason for this is that women in the United Kingdom started to smoke more during World War II, whereas in most other European countries this was not the case until the political and social upheavals of the 1960s.
Smoke Stop prolongs life
Experts believe that the life expectancy of active smokers who consume about one box a day would be ten for men and twelve for women. However, life expectancy in Denmark has been increasing again since the beginning of the 2000s. According to the scientists, this is linked to a changed health awareness of the post-war generations. As Rau told dpa, the demographics study is one of the first to show the importance of the behavior of particular groups of the population. Also, the lifestyle of fewer birth cohorts have great influence on the development of life expectancy. Rau concluded: "With smoking you can reduce your own life expectancy significantly." Smoking is never wrong. Tobacco use is one of the most crucial lifestyle factors for life expectancy. (Ad)