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Quitting smoking reduces lung cancer risk. Now a Danish study finds that reducing the number of cigarettes smoked also reduces the risk. Lung cancer is a very nasty disease with relatively few sufferers surviving for long periods and the irony is that about 90 per cent of it is preventable by avoiding tobacco. If you quit cigarettes - at any age - you'll reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer. Of that there's no doubt. But what if you can't quit- yet manage to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke. Does the risk, say, of lung cancer also fall? Some have argued that people on fewer cigarettes just inhale more deeply taking in a similar amount of carcinogens. A huge Danish study following twenty thousand people for over 30 years though, has good news. Heavy smokers of around 20 or more cigarettes per day who cut their consumption by half reduced their risk of lung cancer over 30 years by about 25 per cent. Those who quit completely reduced it by 50 per cent and for those who stayed off for a long time the fall was even higher at over 80 per cent. A word of warning though. There is no evidence that smoking reduction as opposed to quitting reduces the risk of heart disease or chronic bronchitis. So the bin is still the best place for the cancer sticks.
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