Article by Steve Faber
If you’ve made the decision to quit, you may wonder what happens when you quit smoking. You may be approaching the whole prospect of quitting with some trepidation. After all nicotine is one of the most fiercely addictive substances known to man. To make matters worse, the habitual aspects of cigarette smoking ensure that you’ll constantly have the urge to hold a cigarette, either in your mouth or hand.
When stressful situations rear their ugly head, you’ll have the urge to grab a smoke. Then other place that many smokers find it extremely difficult to overcome the urge to smoke is in bars and nightclubs, where the music is jumping, alcohol is flowing freely, and so many other people are smoking. With luck, some skill, and perseverance, you can make it past these challenges and actually quit. You’ll emerge a successful non-smoker. What happens then? What can you expect when you join the ranks of the smoke free?
The first effects of quitting take effect almost immediately. In fact, if you’re an occasional smoker, you’ve probably experienced some of these already. It doesn’t take very long for you body to begin to overcome the horrifying effects of cigarette smoke being drawn deep into the lungs. One side effect of smoking is that your blood pressure is elevated almost instantly due to the central nervous system stimulant effects of the chemicals present in the smoke.
The First Day After Quitting Cigarette Smoking -
Within a half an hour of drawing your last puff, your blood pressure has dropped back down to the normal range. With the first six to eight hours after you quit, your blood CO levels will be down 50% from their high point and blood O2 levels will be back to normal. By the end of the first day, the nicotine level in your body has dropped dramatically.
The First Week After Quitting Cigarette Smoking –
You can rejoice now. All the nicotine is eliminated from your body before the week is over. In addition, your risk of heart attack is already beginning to drop from when you were an actual smoker. The decline in your lung function stops, and your sense of taste and smell returns to normal.
The First Month After Quitting Cigarette Smoking –
Your circulation is dramatically improved, but it will continue to improve over the next 90 days.
The First Year After Quitting Cigarette Smoking –
Your circulation is back to normal. Your lung function has improved by 10% and your body’s lung mucous production has been reduced back to before smoking levels. Your heart attack risk will be down 50% from where it was when you were smoking, and your risk of suffering a stroke has declined as well.
Five Years After Quitting Cigarette Smoking – After 5 years you have weathered almost all the ill effects of your smoking days, and put the lifestyle behind you. Your risk of a stroke is the same as if you’d never smoked at all. The only risks that are still elevated are those of contracting lung cancer or having a heart attack, but they are far reduced fro the days when you smoked.
After 15 years of being smoke free you now have reached the stage where your risk of both ling cancer and heart attack are the same as healthy non-smokers. Doesn’t it feel great. The one thing that many smokers don’t realize is that the positive effects of quitting cigarettes begins so soon after they quit. They use this as a rationale for continuing to smoke, but they shouldn’t. Your health begins to improve almost as fast as the cigarette goes out.
All these previous benefits of quitting smoking completely ignore something else that happens when you quit; you’ll have more money. You’re probably sick and tired of walking into the store and dropping – on the day’s smokes. Once you quit, that will become a distant memory. All that extra money adds up too. In these days of .00+ gallons of gas, every little bit helps.
If you’re still smoking, you’re most likely spending over ,500 a year on cigarettes! For the average guy or gal, that’s 5% – 10% of your yearly income, before taxes! That means quitting smoking is like giving yourself a five or ten percent yearly pay raise. You’ve gotta like that.
Discover how easy it really can be to quit smoking. If you know how, you really can quit. You’ll get your health back quicker than you ever though possible, and you’ll have a nice pay raise to boot. Check out the Quit Smoking Fast Guide to get on the non smoking road right now.
About the Author
Do you want to quit smoking? Have you though about it for years? Are you sick of spending so much money on cigarettes, just to make the big tobacco companies rich? Well, discover how fast and easy you can stop smoking at the Quit Smoking Fast Guide and get on the road to finally becoming an ex-smoker right now.
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