The Benefits of Stopping Smoking




smoking-2 If your are still looking for motivation to quit smoking, consider the fact that cigarettes are packed with powerful and extremely addictive poisons that slowly yet steadily destroy your body, health, intelligence, nerve cells, lungs, heart… you name it! Once you drop the last “lung rocket”, your body starts to heal itself.

The first positive changes can be noticeable already after 12 hours of smoking cessation, when the blood levels of carbon monoxide decline and the heart and lungs start the process of self-repairing. Withdrawal cravings, irritability, and other unpleasant symptoms caused by nicotine addiction are actually the first signs that your body has started a long recovery process. Although many people can experience some weight gain, dry mouth, fluid retention, cough, pangs of hunger, attacks of anger, and other physical and psychological symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, these symptoms usually do not last long. While most nicotine is removed from the tissues within the first week of smoking cessation, many tobacco-related poisons that have accumulated in your body for many years of smoking take longer to be gone.

If you can abstain from smoking for about 20 minutes, your blood pressure, pulse rate, and body temperature will return to normal. Overnight smoking cessation will make your blood levels of oxygen and carbon monoxide return to the normal range, too. Already after one day of non-smoking, your chances to get heart attack start diminishing, while two days of a non-smoking life will enhance your senses of smell and taste and allow your nerve endings to start the processes of repairing and regrowing.

You can celebrate your first big victory over nicotine addiction if you have not smoked for a few weeks, since by that time most withdrawal symptoms usually disappear. The worst is over! More substantial changes in the health profile usually occur after several months of non-smoking: you will notice that your blood circulation has improved, the lung capacity and function has increased about 30 percent, and even walking has become lighter and easier.

When you reach the term of nine consecutive months without cigarettes, your sinus congestion, shortness of breath, fatigue, and coughing will be diminished substantially. Your lungs will become much cleaner and healthier, their cilia will regrow, and a possibility of infections and diseases will be reduced. At the same time, your overall level of energy will be increased dramatically, you will need less sleep, and will be able to handle stress and work much better than before when you still were smoking. After about one year of a non-smoking life, your risk of developing coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, and heart attack will be reduced by half!

If you can abstain from tobacco for about five years, all processes within your body will return to normal. Your risk of dying from lung cancer, as well as the risk of developing oral cancers of throat, mouth, and oesophagus, will be reduced by half. Stroke risk will be substantially diminished, as well.

In those who have not smoked for ten years, the risk of lung cancer death drops to that of non-smokers. Any precancerous cells that might have developed during the smoking period will be replaced by healthy cells. In addition, ten-year smoking cessation largely reduces the risk of developing cancer of kidney, bladder, and pancreas. Finally, if you manage of abstain from smoking for 15 years, all your health risks, including the risk to develop coronary heart disease, will return to those of non-smokers, and you can celebrate a complete victory over the ugly beast of tobacco addiction.

It is important to understand that dropping cigarettes is the best gift you can give to yourself, your children, and people around you. You will greatly improve your chances for living a long, productive, and healthy life. Remember that every year tobacco claims the lives of about 130,000 people who die from cancer, 50,000 - from lung diseases, and 170,000 - from heart attacks.

Jimmy Edwards

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Posted on December 7, 2007 
Filed Under Smoking and Health

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