Pregnancy health centre

Breaking the habit

Almost 70% of adult smokers say they would like to stop smoking - and the most common reason given is concern about health.

This concern is well-justified. More than 114,000 people die each year in the UK from smoking-related diseases such as heart disease and lung cancer. Plus, the dangers get worse with age. People still smoking in their 40s and 50s are three to four times more likely to die over the next 10 years than non-smokers.

However, gaining extra years is not the only reward for stopping. Other benefits begin immediately.

Healthier life

Within 20 minutes of putting out your last cigarette, your blood pressure and heart rate return to normal.

Within 12 hours, the level of poisonous carbon monoxide in your body has also returned to normal.

Over the next few months, your lungs will regain their ability to remove pollutants efficiently, which reduces your risk of infection. Your ability to taste and smell will improve and that chronic sinus congestion should disappear.

By the first anniversary of your last cigarette, your risk of heart disease should be about half that of a smoker.

Within a decade, your risk of dying from lung cancer will have dropped by half. It won’t ever drop to the level of someone who has never smoked, but it will come fairly close.

By your 15^th anniversary, your risk of a heart attack is the same as someone who has never smoked.

Stop smelling

There are other immediate benefits when you stop smoking, says Dr Norman Edelman of the American Lung Association.

“As soon as you take a shower and change your clothes, you stop smelling”, he says. “You may cough more, but that shouldn’t be a concern because it means you’re clearing the gunk out of your lungs and opening your airways. In a few weeks you should begin to notice an increase in your exercise tolerance”.

The extreme makeover

Dr Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York has spent 20 years studying the harmful effects of tobacco. He says stopping smoking is “the extreme makeover.”

“If you quit smoking early enough, by 30 or so, your risk of dying prematurely becomes almost the same as someone who never smoked. If you wait another decade, the benefits are about half of what they would have been. If you quit [then] you add eight to 10 years to your life”, he says.

An array of problems

Although many people know that cigarettes promote cardiovascular disease and lung ailments, it’s less well known that they also promote other ailments, says Cummings.

For example, peripheral vascular disease, which constricts blood flow to the hands, feet and other organs, is accelerated by cigarette smoke.