General information only, not medical, legal, tax, or investment advice. Consult a qualified professional.
Quit smoking. Sooner keeps more years
In one line
A U.S. study reported that people who kept smoking lived more than 10 years less, on average, than people who never smoked. Quitting before 40 avoided most of the extra risk of death from continuing.
What it costs
It costs no money. The cigarette money stays with you. The hard stretch is often a few weeks to a few months.
What you get
Jha et al. (NEJM, 2013) reported that smokers in the contemporary U.S. lost more than 10 years compared with people who never smoked, and that quitting before 40 avoided about 90% of that excess mortality.
How strong the evidence is
Source
Jha P et al. (2013). New England Journal of Medicine.
Watch-outs
No medicine names here. A clinician or a stop-smoking clinic can help with the method. The book does not call this “best value,” because it takes willpower.
Adapted from HowToLiveBetter item 2-1.
Next habitRelated
Best valueDon’t starve or purge to control weight
People with anorexia nervosa died at about 5.9 times the rate of their peers. Long stretches of severe dieting made an eating disorder much more likely. Moving more is the safer side of weight control.
No smoking in the home or the car
About 600,000 deaths in 2004 were attributed to secondhand smoke, and roughly 3 in 10 of those deaths were children. Home is where people breathe it the longest.
Brush, and clean between the teeth once a day
A Japanese follow-up found slightly fewer deaths among people who used floss or an interdental brush. Older adults with few teeth left were on the higher-death side. That does not prove the floss caused the difference.