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We all know that smoking is bad for our health and that eating vegetables is good for it. Yet how bad and how good are they? Without a clear notion of threat and reward, it is that much harder to avoid a cigarette or to choke down a serving of broccoli. “I hate when someone tells me that something is risky,” says David Spiegelhalter, a professor of risk assessment at the University of Cambridge. “Well, compared to what?”
To answer his own question, Spiegelhalter converted reams of statistical risk tables into a simple metric: a microlife—30 minutes. If you smoke two cigarettes, you lose 30 minutes of your life (top graphic). Exercise for 20 minutes, and you gain two units of microlife. Over time bad habits accelerate your aging, and good habits slow it down (bottom graphic). “That seems to resonate with people,” Spiegelhalter says. “No one likes to get older faster.”
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
For a video about your risk of immediate death, see ScientificAmerican.com/jan2013/graphic-science
This article was originally published with the title The True Cost of Risky Behavior.
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28 Comments
Add Comment"If you smoke two cigarettes, you lose 30 minutes of your life (top graphic). Exercise for 20 minutes, and you gain two units of microlife."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShouldn't it be: In a 30 minute day, 2 cigarettes = -3 minutes, exercise = +2 minutes?
Why change terms in mid-thought? This just doesn't make any sense to me. 2 cigarettes = an entire life?
The way I'm reading it, a "unit of microlife" = 30 minutes. (why he bothers calling it a microlife is odd). But No "30 minute day". And not "an entire life", but an entire MICROlife.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“I hate when someone tells me that something is risky,” So?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhose 'statistical risk tables', + or - 3 sigma deviation?
I hate someone partially quoting....etc,etc,etc.
A very poorly written article. I agree with criticisms made above. Also ... "If you smoke two cigarettes, you lose 30 minutes of your life (top graphic)". My 'top graphic' shows 1 microlife is gained by consuming 10 grams of alcohol! Am I missing something?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just started following this site. Is this the quality of reporting I can expect?
If you read carefully or watch the video you will see that the first 10g alcohol adds one microlife and all subsequent 10g drinks cost you 0.5 microlives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting concept. However, if I were in to quality instead of quantity I would go ahead and smoke my cigarettes and die sooner. Why do a lot of little things that really annoy me, or forgo something I really like so that I can live longer and be annoyed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBalderdash!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've smoked 25 to 50 cigs a day for over 56 years. If I have lost 30 minutes for every two smokes than I've been dead for years!!
I'm NOT going to put up the real stats - nobody believes anything but the fake ones - but it's also claimed that 15 times the number of people who die in car accidents, are killed by smoking. Do the math for yourself; how many people do you know who've died in car accidents - multiply that by 15. Most people haven't even known that many people who've died from ALL causes!
Eddiequest - I think the writer referes to an extra 30 minutes of life as "a microlife" because we get about 40 million minutes in an 80 year life, hence 30 minutes is about 1 millionth of a life - hence a microlife (micro signifies 1 millionth of an entity.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo you do everything right. You don't smoke, you stop after the first drink, just when you start enjoying it. You forego that delicious steak in favor of broccoli that you hate and then you end up living an extra 3 years in misery in a nursing home that you hate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is BS, and more mr. Spiegelhalter's personal opinions than real statistics. + or - life from alcohol? What kind?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-30 min of life from eating a small steak? REALLY? Regardless of the rest of your eating habits?
None of these make much sense. Total bulldoodoo fit for the back of some backwater tabloid - definitely not SA material.
Disapointing.
this article = complete nonsense, a friend of mine was a chain smoker for allmost 70 years befor he died at 86 .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe was overweight at least 20kilo for the last 25 years of his life (the time I knew him)perhaps much longer.
He took a bath once a week, he was not shy of hamburgers etc etc...... he should have lived at least till 120.
Let me tell you,he died because his wife died 6 months before....I am not going to listen to those "health pirates"
Sad that so many of the commentators haven't even bothered watching the video, where they would see that far from promoting a dull life of abstinence, Dr. Spiegelhalter suggests that people should look at these data, recognizing that they are at best very global averages, and decide for themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe value of this data is that, until recently, we all heard lots of advice about eating greens and don't eat meat and exercise and so on, but had no way to quantify or compare - and so in many cases were sacrificing their quality of life for virtually no meaningful benefit - at least in terms of life-expectancy.
Now, when you want a 3rd beer and your partners tells you it's bad for you, you can say "yes dear, these three beers I'm drinking will cut 5 minutes off my life - I'm willing to accept that" ..
Mark Fischetti provides a nice way to communicate what we all already know only too well - that some things are good for our health, others less or not at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooking at many of the comments, I see lots of angry human beings who prefer to hide from "reality" (the best of our accumulated scientific knowledge, with all its possible limitations). To justify their actions, the balk at it. I say, lets get real !
tygereye50, you've just been unlucky and got into habits which harm and hurt you, but which you've assumed you really like.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tried smoking as a teenager and realized I didn't enjoy it, and that was that.
Maybe you liked feeling cool and in with the kids who smoked, and then you got addicted, so you now 'like' smoking even though it's likely not just to shorten your life but to make the last years of your life miserable with illness.
I'm lucky - I was brought up by parents who encouraged us to think for ourselves, who knew how to cook broccoli and other greens so that they were delicious (unlike the grey mush served up by most schools, hospitals and even parents to their victims), and who
took us out for walks almost every weekend and whenever we went on holiday.
So now for me
pleasure = thinking for myself
pleasure = healthy food
pleasure = walking
pleasure = all sorts of other healthy habits.
Changing the unhealthy habits I've learned takes a lot of effort (there are very few I've changed completely yet) but I know it's possible. So for the unlucky people who've got into unhealthy habits, for whatever reasons, anything such as these graphics which helps that change is to be welcomed.
scribblerlarry - You've confused your own individual experience with the statistics, which look at the patterns from thousands of people. Within that pattern there will be people - indeed most people! - who don't fit the average. Just because there's an average 'life expectancy' it doesn't mean that everybody dies at that age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps your maths teacher did their best but you just weren't paying attention at the time!
Fanandala - why the defensive reaction?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you live healthily you'll actually reduce the risk that you need to end up in a nursing home (though why assume all nursing homes are so bad that you're bound to hate the one you end up in?).
If you don't like broccoli don't eat it - eat some other green veg that you do like instead.
If you like steak, just eat less of it (and help to release food supplies for other people).
(What worries me most is that you say you only begin to enjoy alcohol after you've had the first glass.)
Indeed in all the angry responses to this article there seem to be these assumptions that
healthy habits = unpleasant habits
unhealthy habits = pleasant habits
and that people who want to encourage healthy habits are threatening to take the last remaining pleasures away from the writers, who seem to feel themselves to be victims - but that ain't necessarily so.
The habits we've grown up with - because of the societies, families, schools and other institutions we live in - are hard to change, but we are free to choose to at least try to change them. If we don't want to listen to good advice we can ignore it (rather than attack the advisers, who mean well). Or we can choose to adapt the advice to our own tastes so that we can choose healthy habits which we also enjoy.
Very well put: 40 million minutes in eighty years! So, TIME IS of the essence, and LIFE is what I make of it! I'm entering my EIGHTTH decade this year and feel so much better than before, just by not putting life-shortening items into my mouth. Losing a quarter of an hour of my precious lifetime for every five minutes of cigarette inhaling , or even half an hour for a five-minute chew of dead steak now leaves me for dead! Youthevity.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are an exception to the rule, yo are on the thin edge of the Bell curve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood point, it does not address our right to stop our life when we are in misery. Bring on the Nembutol when wanted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdumb comment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgood answer, nice comment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStudies have shown for quite a while now that ONE "dose" of alcohol per day is beneficial for reducing plaque. A "dose" is equivalent to one shot of liquor, or one beer, or one glass of wine. Beyond that amount, the negative effects of alcohol outweigh the benefits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLoosing thirty minutes every day is quite easy by doing unnecessary work (like happens in government offices as well by superfluous competing on markets). So I like to mention how to gain even an hour per day for everybody. This is not difficult, just change from 24 to 25 hours per day while keeping working time the same number of hours. There is more good news: because december is such a pleasant month with many feasts and presents it is intended to increase the number of its days to 35. May-be in compensation march can become much shorter; the weather then generally is rainy and cold.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk scribblerlarry, first you only address one of your behaviors, not everything you do which makes your point of contention stupid. Which things do you do that extend life? Perhaps if you hadn't failed at middle school math you would have gotten the basics of complex addition/subtraction formulas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the death statistics; I know one person killed in a car crash and 7 killed by tobacco related diseases including 5 within my own family. Interestingly the car crash victim was also a smoker. That tends to make your entire issue kind of pointless because I know a couple of thousand people which is a lot more than 15. By isolating your personal experiences and saying they are universal you validate everyone else doing the same. This means that my experiences are the only ones that count because I say so and thus you are stupid and a total loser.
Actually as a moderately intelligent person I know that you are simply ignorant of how statistical analysis works and are neither a loser nor stupid. Ignorance is common place and should carry no negative connotations. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity is permanent and tends to be gruesomely fatal. That is why science always is victorious eventually as bad data and conclusions are gradually eliminated and a tiny bit more of the truth becomes known.
"I've smoked 25 to 50 cigs a day for over 56 years. If I have lost 30 minutes for every two smokes than I've been dead for years!!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(25 * .5) * 365 * 56 / (24 * 365) = 29.16 years
hours lost per day * days in year * years / hours in year
So you'd on average have lost about 29 years, of course that's an approximation and you've probably already passed it but there's others who have paid a lot more with a lot fewer smokes.
"but it's also claimed that 15 times the number of people who die in car accidents, are killed by smoking. Do the math for yourself; how many people do you know who've died in car accidents - multiply that by 15."
Car accidents - 0, Lung Cancer (only one cause of death) - 2, of course I'm fairly young so would expect the cancer number to increase more in the future.
This article is quite straight forward, however if you do not understand statistics it can be confusing. All of the results are "statistically speaking" but individual results will vary considerably. However, I think this very useful for considering daily choices and translating those into risks. Personally, this is the most impactful article in SA for many years. I would love to see more expanded research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW Spiegelhalter is the #3 most cited mathematicial alive today. He is the real deal.
Alcohol consumption in moderate amounts has long been proven beneficial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is just average results, sigmas are not needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this