How do “experts” know all these specific statistics about life expectancy (1 cigarette = 11 minutes off your life, etc…)? How do they test this?
In: Biology
They compare the average lifespan of people who do not smoke with the average lifespans of people who do smoke compared to how many smokes they smoke.
If someome smokes X cigarettes per day for Y years and on average die Z years earlier than people who don’t smoke at all, each cigarette could be considered to contribute to those numbers.
It isn’t an exact thing. Smoking a cigarette won’t specifically make you die exactly 11 minutes before you would have otherwise. It is just statistics and is good for comparing *large* trends and helps put a bad habit into perspective.
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