The decision to smoke is almost always made during the teen years when teen believe nothing bad could ever happen to them. Many keep using tobacco products throughout adulthood, not always because they want to, but because they are addicted to a product that is powerfully habit-forming. Whether they start because they are addicted to a product that is powerfully habit-forming. Whether they start because of peer pressure, to rebel against their parents, or because they think it's cool -- millions of teens get hooked on a habit that will kill hundreds of thousands of them a year when they're adults.
Since the first Surgeon General's report on health and smoking in 1964, an endless amount of research has shown how smoking hurts your health. Tobacco is currently known to cause heart disease, chronic lung disease, and stroke, not to mention cancer of the lungs, esophagus, larynx, mouth and bladder. Tobacco is filled with dozens and dozens of chemicals that are deadly all by themselves. So, when packed together with each puff of smoke, it's no wonder they kill people.
If you use tobacco, there are compelling reasons for you to quit. The rewards of quitting are tremendous, and they begin immediately. You’ll experience the benefits of not using tobacco within 20 minutes of quitting, and as your tobacco-free days accumulate, the benefits will accumulate, too. Quitting tobacco will improve your health, your finances, your self-esteem and your everyday life – immediately and over the long term – in ways you may never have imagined.
What Happens When You Quit
- Immediately after quitting smoking, heart rate and blood pressure, which is abnormally high while smoking, begin to return to normal.
- Within a few hours, the level of carbon monoxide, which reduces the blood’s ability to carry oxygen, begins to decline.
- Within a few weeks, circulation improves, you don’t produce as much phlegm, and you don’t cough or wheeze as often.
- The workload on the heart is decreased and cardiac function is improved.
- Food tastes better, and your sense of smell returns to normal.
- Everyday activities no longer leave you out of breath.
- Within several months of quitting, you experience significant improvements in lung function.
- In one year, your risk of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke is halved.
- In five years, many kinds of cancer, including lung, larynx, mouth, stomach, cervix, bladder, show decline in risk, and that decline approaches the risk of someone who has never smoked.
- Within 10 to 15 years, risk of lung disease, including bronchitis and emphysema, are decreased.
- Conditions such as cataracts, macular degeneration, thyroid conditions, hearing loss, dementia, and osteoporosis are positively affected.
- Nerve endings in the mouth and nose begin to regenerate, improving taste and smell.
- Medications may work better, enabling some to be taken in decreased doses.
- If you’re taking birth control pills, quitting smoking will decrease your chance of heart attack and stroke due to clotting.
- You’ll have decreased risk for impotence and infertility.
- If you’re pregnant, you’ll protect your unborn child from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and low birth weight.
- Years will be added to your life: people who quit smoking, regardless of their age, are less likely than those who continue to smoke to die from smoking-related illness.
When you quit smoking:
- your breath will smell better
- stained teeth will get whiter
- your clothes and hair will smell better
- your fingers and fingernails will no longer look yellow
- you’ll have better oral health
- you’ll have a better chance for fewer skin wrinkles
If you're a tobacco user, it's never too late for a change! YOU can and YOU must start it within your inmost self. It just take a little time and a lot of suffering, that's all.
Thanks to:
* Zachary Goldstein (author of LiSTEN magazine)
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