I have many patients tell me all the time that they are too old to stop smoking or they don‘t have any good reasons to quit. Sometimes they say they already have the ill-effects of smoking and ask why they should quit since they're already sick. So, is it too late? Do the reasons to quit that most people have, like better health, still apply to them?
When patients are in the hospital because they smoked, it's hard to be honest with them, because they already feel bad. The last thing on their agenda is to be told by some guy in scrubs that their disease is their own fault. But you owe them the truth. So you carefully answer their questions without making them feel worse about the poor health choices they made in life.
But in their sickened state, they do ask some quality questions. Are their reasons to quit smoking the same as a younger and healthier person? Do they derive the same stop smoking benefits? Lets look at these for a moment.
First of all, quit smoking benefits are great. But, they're even greater when you quit sooner in life. But older smokers still receive benefits too. For example, roughly 90% of all lung cancers are caused by smoking. Think about that for a minute. If everyone stopped smoking, 90% of all lung cancers would go away. So if you quit, how long do you continue to run an increased risk of acquiring lung cancer? For those who quit smoking for 10 years, the risk is 30-50% less than current smokers. If you stopped for 15 years, the risk may go down to 80-90% less than current smokers.
So, if you quit at age 55, then you‘d have just about the same risk of getting lung cancer as a non-smoker, by the time you turned 70. This means you get to enjoy your retirement and grandchildren under a lesser threat for a truly catastrophic disease. Now let’s say you are 40 years old and looking for reasons to quit smoking. Now, your risk approaches that of never smokers at a much earlier age, 55. In this example, you get to enjoy much more of your life with a much lesser risk profile for disease. That is peace of mind.
Now we turn our attention to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), popularly known as emphysema. Many smokers have some sort of COPD as they age. They simply can't avoid it. Smoking does what smoking does, it damages the lungs and there is no way around it. So people have more damage, some less, but the damage is there. The question becomes, how much damage are you willing to risk living with? So when my patients ask if smoking cessation will help their COPD, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes, of course it will“. It’s as simple as adding 1+1. The less you smoke the less damage you have. This isn’t rocket science. Studies show the progression of COPD slows after you quit smoking. The degree of inflammation and reactivity (both cause obstruction) in the airways, continues to occur, but at a slower rate.
So the answer is, “Yes their are plenty of reasons to quit and benefits to be gained for the older and diseased smoker who wants to stop". And we’ve only looked at two primary reasons to quit without looking at the other numerous diseases caused by or made worse because of smoking.
