Are you one of those people who has tried to talk someone out of smoking and failed? Welcome to the club.
I have friends and family members who are quite dedicated smokers and even after multiples shots at educating, manipulating, and emotionally blackmailing them, I have not been able to make them quit, yet. Some of them either say that it’s “too late to quit” or “the damage is already done”. However, one study shows that it’s is, in fact, never to late to quit smoking.
According to a report by News18, a recent study shows that quitting smoking not just puts a stop to further lung damage but also reverses it. Cancer-prone cells are replaced by healthy ones when a person stops smoking.
“People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it’s too late to stop smoking – the damage is already done. What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it’s never too late to quit,” said study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
He added, “Some of the people in the study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes in their life. But within a few years of quitting, many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco.”
16 people participated as subjects for the study and each underwent a lung biopsy. The participants included current smokers, ex-smokers, adults who had never smoked and children. The biopsies were done to look for mutations that can lead to cancer, reports The Japan Times.
The study found 9 out of ever 10 lung cells in current smokers had mutations including the ones that can cause cancer. But in ex-smokers, many of those damaged cells had been replaced by healthy ones, similar to those people who had never smoked.
Up to 40% of the lung cells of ex-smokers which was 4-times more than current smokers.
Hence, dear smokers, it is actually NEVER too late to quit smoking!