Recovery from Smoking: Heart Disease Risk Reduction Timeline for Ex-Smokers

It takes an ex-smoker approximately:

- 1 year to reduce their cardiovascular disease to half that of a smoker.

- 5 years for stroke mortality risk to fall to the level of that for people who have never smoked.

- 15 years for the coronary mortality and total mortality rates of ex-smokers aged 35+ at the time of quitting to fall to comparable levels of people who have never smoked.