Quitting Smoking Benefits

Regardless of age, sex or how many years you have been puffing away, there are always benefits of quitting smoking. Everyone who smokes knows deep down (even if they wont admit it ) that they should quit. There are many benefits of quitting smoking, with undoubtedly the main one being that it can save and add many years to your life. If you choose to smoke, odds on it will kill you, history has well and truly proved that for us. Lets take a closer look at the benefits.

Here are some quitting smoking benefits in relation to your last cigarette.

20 minutes: Heart rate slows down which in turn lowers your blood pressure
8-12 hours: Dangerous carbon monoxide levels have dropped down to normal
2-3 days: Risk of heart attack declines (and will continue to do so for next 3 months). Taste bud sensitivity and sense of smell begin to return. Energy levels increase.
1 month: Bronchial tubes begin to heal which reduces the need to cough and/or clear the throat. Lung functioning has improved.
2+ months: Energy levels will significantly increase, everyday activities such as climbing stairs become much easier. Blood circulation has improved because cigarettes no are no longer constricting blood vessels.
1 year: Risk of getting coronary heart disease is half of what it would've be if you still smoked.
5+ years: Risk of stroke is the same as a non-smoker. Lungs are strong and healthy again, risk of getting lung cancer is halved. Risk of getting other smoking related cancers are greatly diminished also.

It is easy to see that quitting will add years to your life but there are many more benefits of quitting smoking than just this, these include;

• Other health benefits, like decreased risk of emphysema, bronchitis, pneumonia, angina, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, sexual disfunctions to name a few from an enormous list.
• Those around you benefit from not having to breathe in your second hand smoke. They also get to a know a new you whose breath and clothes no longer stink of awful cigarette smoke.
• Smoking ages you greatly. By quitting you give yourself the chance of looking younger for a longer time.
  
• Think of all the money you will save, I mean really think about it. If you are a pack a day smoker and it costs $10 a pack. In one year thats an extra $3650 in your back pocket. $Cha-Ching$. Do the calculations for your own habit, you will be shocked.

The health benefits of quitting smoking I have talked about above are only the tip of the iceberg. If you are a smoker, no matter your age, gender or how long you have been smoking, now is the time to quit.

It is your turn to experience the benefits that quitting smoking has to offer.

Why Do People Start Smoking?

In this the year of 2008 can anybody out there give me one good, legitimate excuse to start smoking, just one is all I'm looking for....... anybody? Didn't think so, because lets be honest with ourselves, there is no excuse. So why do people start smoking?

So what was my good, legitimate reason for starting?

Well the year was 2003, I had recently moved out of home and now had the freedom to make my all my own decisions, including whether or not to smoke. I chose to smoke. Anyway, what choice did I really have, my flatmate's and nearly all of my friends smoked. Being around smoking all the time I was bound to start eventually. There was also the fact I was learning about all the stresses of the real world including having responsibilities such as my first full time job and having to pay all my bills. Smoking helped deal with these. I was a smoker for four years, although luckily now I have seen the light.

Well, those were my excuses. Are any of them good and legitimate? Absolutely not. Why are they not legitimate? Because it is now the 21st century and before I started I knew all the dangers involved and I knew how highly addictive nicotine is. Yes, I was young but youth is not a good, legitimate excuse to start. The youth of today are more highly educated on the dangers of smoking than at any other time in or history. There are some in society who do have good, legitimate reasons to have started smoking and they are our oldest generations, the ones we call Grandma and Grandpa.

Back when they were young, smoking was encouraged to the point where if you didn't smoke you were considered a bit of an outcast. Smoking advertising was literally everywhere, even cartoon characters were used to advertise the so called "benefits" of smoking. Check out this television ad on You Tube featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. There they are sucking away on cancer sticks, sitting, laughing and talking about the joys of smoking while their wives are in the background slaving away mowing the lawns. Unbelievable.

I also remember being told the story about how my best mates grandpa started up smoking. He was a teenager in the 1920's and he had a bad cough so his mum sent him to the doctor. He walked into the doctors office to find the doctor puffing away on tobacco. Well what did you reckon this highly trusted, highly educated member of society suggested for the cough? His subscription was to start smoking tobacco with no filters immediately, as that will get rid of the nasty cough! So of course, like a good boy would, he followed the doctors orders. From then on he smoked no filter cigarettes until the day he died, not surprisingly of lung cancer.

Now thats a good, legitimate excuse to have started smoking.

If you know your excuses for starting smoking are like mine, not really excuses at all, it is time to quit. Now I've quit, I realise I had no excuse to start, but I had many excuses to stop.

Effects of Smoking on Human Health

The effects of smoking on human health have been known since the 1940’s. 60 years later the list of diseases associated with smoking is enormous and ever growing. Everyone knows the risks involved but yet that does not stop those of us who continue to light up everyday. The most disastrous health effect of smoking is that it can (and in most cases will) kill you. The most common lethal health effects of smoking, are cancer and cardiovascular disease

Cancer
Smoking is strongly linked to a number of different types of cancer which threaten multiple organs (pancreas, kidney, bladder to name a few). 30% of all cancer deaths worldwide are thought to be a direct result of tobacco smoking. The most common form of cancer caused by smoking is lung cancer. Smokers are 22 times more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers. This disease hardly existed before smoking. Those with lung cancer usually don’t live longer than 5 years after being diagnosed.

Cardiovascular Disease
The health effects of smoking include the increased the risk of stroke (twice as likely) plus heart and artery disease (2-4 times as likely). This is due to the fact smoking causes an increase in blood pressure, decreases exercise tolerance, damages blood vessels and increases clotting of blood. All of this puts enormous stress on the heart and sooner or later this pressure will become too much and can lead to fatal consequences.

Non-lethal health effects of smoking
While not all effects of smoking are life threatening, they can still cause years of suffering and pain. Some common non-lethal effects of smoking include;

• Emphysema (85% of sufferers smoke)
• Angina (20 x the risk)
• Speeds up the aging process
• Neck, Back and muscle pains
• Osteoporosis
• Erectile dysfunction/Impotence
• Pneumonia
• Psoriasis (2 x risk)
• Type 2 Diabetes (non-insulin dependent)
• Hearing loss
• Stomach ulcers
• Influenza
• Tooth decay
• Tuberculosis

The effects of smoking listed above are but a few examples from an enormous list. It is not matter of if you will be effected by any of these if you continue to smoke; it is a matter of which ones will effect you, how many will effect you and when will smoking kill you.

The disastrous health effects of smoking are obvious. Do you want to quit and give yourself the chance of living a long, happy, healthy life, or do you want to keep smoking and live a short, unhealthy life full of sickness, pain and disease.

If you choose to quit then try the "Successfully Stop Smoking System". It has saved many people from suffering from devastating effects of smoking. Out of all the products available, this was the only thing that worked for me. It uses psychological tactics I knew about but never would have thought to use to help me quit smoking.

I know it can help you too.

Start Smoking Story

Hi there,

My name is Todd Williams and I am here to help you to stop smoking.

Now, I am not one of those people who has never had a cigarette in their life and looks down their noses at smokers. I was a full time smoker for 4 years and I know what its like to have that nicotine craving. I would like to tell you my start smoking story.

I actually didn't start smoking full time until I was 20, which puts me in a bit of a minority because the vast majority of people take up the habit while at high school. I would like to tell you about my smoking history from my first cigarette until the day I stopped smoking 8 months ago.

Just like the first kiss, we all remember our first cigarette. Mine was with my mate Simon when we were 12 or 13 (cigarette, not kiss). His dad is a smoker and one day Simon decided it was time for us to see what all the fuss was about. We waited until his dad was asleep, pinched a ciggie and sneaked off to the garage. Never really being the rebellious type, I remember being nervous and excited. We were about to be very bad.

My mate Simon lit it up and took a drag, then handed it over to me. I held it to my lips with visions in my head of me coughing and spluttering all over the place (like they do in the movies), but I never did. We finished off the ciggie and all I remember was feeling slightly confused because it wasn't fun, it stunk and it tasted really bad. I have to admit, I did feel pretty cool though.

For the rest of my teenage years I would have had less than 10 cigarettes and I remember saying to people that I will never ever start smoking full time. Famous last words huh. I managed to survive all the smoking peer pressure through my teenage years so how did I start when I was 20. Well like for many of us it starts when we get to know our friend Mr Alcohol.

Every Friday I would go around to my mate Tim's place and we would have a few beers and play some darts. It became a weekly ritual for us. He is a smoker and after downing a few he would offer me a ciggie and being slightly intoxicated I would say yes. As the Fridays went by I gradually smoked more and more each time. One Friday he got a bit annoyed at the fact I was smoking all of his cigarettes so I decided I would buy some to take to his house on Fridays. Good idea in theory but the fact of the matter was I now had ciggies on me all the time. I began to smoke on other days, when I wasn't drinking and even on my own. Before I knew it I was buying pouches of tobacco and I was hooked.

Nicotine had won and it would continue to win for four more years.

I have been a non smoker for the past 8 months and I am 100% certain I will never, ever start again. Famous last words again I know but I know deep down inside myself that smoking is gone from my life, forever. You probably want to know how I quit and how I could be so confident of never starting again, well I'm going tell you. It is a method called the "Successfully Stop Smoking System".

It was the only thing that helped me and many others to stop smoking.