It takes 15 years for the heart to fully recover after you quit smoking: Study
A new study has found that smokers will have to wait 15 years after quitting if their risk of heart disease and stroke must return to that of a non-smoking individual. While previous studies have claimed that the risk of a stroke for smokers stabilizes within five years, new research suggests that it may take up to three times the said duration.
Being the first report to examine the connection in a living cohort, it will be presented next week at the American Heart Association conference. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center analyzed data on 8,700 people over a span of 50 years and found that it takes well over a decade for the hearts of smokers to rejuvenate themselves completely from the lethal damage caused by nicotine, tobacco and the countless other chemicals present in cigarettes.
