At Home: Quit While Ahead

It’s no secret that smoking cigarettes negatively impacts your health, and that quitting could save your life. But did you know that the earlier you quit, the better chance you have at achieving the lifespan of someone who’s never touched a cigarette?

As The Toronto Star reports, a new study by Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital shows that quitting ?before age 40 can restore the life expectancies of smokers to virtually normal lengths.?

Research has shown that smoking typically ?[cuts] a decade off a smoker’s life,? but It’s possible to gain back that longevity by quitting as early as possible. Dr. Prabhat Jha, head of St. Michael’s Centre for Global Health Research, told reporters that ?those that quit by age 30 have pretty much the same survival curves as never-smokers.?

Quitting by 40 will gain back nine of the years the smoker might otherwise have lost, and quitting by age 50, six years. However, researchers caution that while longevity may be regained, overall health will still be affected by every year spent smoking, and ?[the] chance that smokers will develop lung or other types of cancer remain higher and linger for years after they’ve butted out.?

Around the World: Prepare to Die

Air travel security is taken seriously by flight attendants?perhaps a little too seriously, as one New Zealand man found out.

As Yahoo! News reports, Wynand Mullins was asked to remove his t-shirt because of its theoretically threatening message: ?My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.?

The famous classic line?from The Princess Bride?was deemed ?intimidating? to ?concerned? passengers on the plane. A flight attendant told Mullins to ?put on a different shirt? and that she would ?attempt to find him [one],? but she did not give him an alternative shirt.

Amid the amusement of some of the passengers, who like many others were familiar with the movie and the line, Mullins kept wearing the shirt?though he told reporters that he ?wouldn’t be surprised if they had someone watching me the whole time.?

For his own part, Mullins doesn’t appear offended, telling reporters that ?[the] whole experience was a bit over the top, but also a bit comical.?