It takes a quarter of a century for the body to recover after a long period of smoking.
This was discovered by scientists from South Korea.
They conducted a study on this topic and shared their findings in a scientific paper for the journal JAMA .
The heart and blood vessels of a former smoker are restored after 25 years.
Scientists came to this conclusion after assessing the health of more than 100,000 people who once smoked but managed to get rid of the bad habit.
To get a more complete picture, the researchers compared their data with 4 million people who had never smoked.
Other data were also taken into account, such as age at which people started smoking and the number of cigarettes they smoked daily.
Researchers claim that in people who smoked for 8+ years, the heart and blood vessels were restored only 25 years after they got rid of the bad habit.
Scientists have stressed that tobacco contains chemicals that damage the blood vessels that supply the heart.
The longer a person smokes, the greater the risk of a heart attack, experts concluded.
