Some interesting fact about quit smoking
20 minutes after quitting: your heart rate drops.
12 hours after quitting: carbon monoxide in your blood drops to normal.
2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: your heart attack risk begins to drop; your lung function begins to improve.
1 to 9 months after quitting: your coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
1 year after quitting: your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker's.
5 years after quitting: your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker's 5 - 15 years after quitting.
10 years after quitting: your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker's; your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney and pancreas decreases.
15 years after quitting: your risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a non-smoker's.
Why Is Smoking Bad for us?
Smoking is responsible for several diseases, such as cancer, long-term (chronic) respiratory diseases, and heart disease, as well as premature death.
Smoking causes cancer
90% of lung cancer patients developed their disease because of smoking. Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer deaths in the world. Smokers also have a significantly higher risk of developing:
Bladder cancer
Kidney cancer
Cancers of the pharynx and larynx (throat cancer)
Mouth cancer
Esophagus cancer
Cancer of the pancreas
Stomach cancer
Some types of leukemia
Cancer of the nose and sinuses
Cervical cancer
Bowel cancer
Ovarian cancer
In some cases, also breast cancer
Smoking and heart/cardiovascular disease
Smoking causes an accumulation of fatty substances in the arteries, known as atherosclerosis, the main contributor to smoking-related deaths. Smoking is also a significant contributory factor in coronary heart disease risk. People with coronary heart disease are much more likely to have a heart attack.
Tobacco smoke raises the risk of coronary heart disease by itself. When combined with other risk factors, such as hypertension (high blood pressure), obesity, physical inactivity, or diabetes, the risk of serious, chronic illness and death is huge.
Successful Quit Smoking Programs
If you are looking to put together or select a quit smoking program, I suggest you consider four elements in your "combination":
Appropriate use of pharmacological products.
If you feel you are severely addicted to smoking, you may wish to consider nicotine replacement products so your body gradually gets used to living without nicotine: always talk to your doctor, pharmacist, or qualified quitting expert first before using these drugs.
Advice and support
Advice and support can help you become more self-aware, identify your triggers and when moments of weakness may occur, develop strategies and contigencies, keep you realistically grounded and on track with your plan, and prevent relapse. Examples include one-to-one or in-person counseling, telephone counseling, internet programs, group support, mentoring, and coaching.
Measuring and recording
To help you see in black and white how much you smoke, how much it costs you, how much you could save; also keeping a journal of your quitting journey.
Improving your knowledge: Read the science, talk to experts, and learn for yourself how smoking damages your health and the health of those around you. Learn how others tackled the challenge.
New Research Guidance on Hard Core Smokers' Quit Options
If you can't quit smoking in one go, what are your options? In England it appears that hard core smokers may be offered an alternative route that starts with "harm reduction" rather than quitting in one step. A draft guidance based on this approach was launched this week for public consultation. Although over the last 50 years or so there has been a dramatic reduction in the numbers who smoke, there remains a "hard core" of people who find it hard to quit, as well as those who don't want to. Now NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), the independent body that in England responsible for providing national guidance and standard on matters of health, is putting out a draft guideline titled "Tobacco: harm-reduction approaches to smoking" for public consultation that seeks to help those who can't quit smoking in one step. Professor Mike Kelly, Director of the NICE Centre for Public Health Excellence, says in a statement:
This draft NICE guidance will, once finalized, be useful in setting out how different harm reduction options can help tackle tobacco use for individuals who smoke. "Smoking tobacco is responsible for over 79,000 deaths in England each year and children's vulnerability to second-hand smoke is well documented. If you are a smoker, quitting smoking is the best way to improve health, and quitting in one step is most likely to be successful. However some people - particularly those who are highly dependent on smoking - may not feel able (or don't want) to do this," says Kelly.
Harm Reduction
The guidance covers a number of harm reduction options (aimed at reducing harms to both to the smoker and others) as a route to quitting, including:
- Quit smoking in one step with the aid of one or more licensed nicotine-based products, and continue to use such products as a substitute, possibly indefinitely.
- Cut down as a step to quitting, with the aim of stopping altogether within a few months. Achieve this by smoking fewer cigarettes or inhaling or smoking less of each cigarette. Do this with or without the aid of one or more licensed nicotine-containing products.
- Smoke less: either inhale less, smoke less of each cigarette, with or without the aid of licensed products.
- Give up for a while, with or without the aid of licensed nicotine-based products, for particular occasions or settings, for instance at home or in the workplace, or in environments where smoking is not allowed (NICE cites prisons and secure mental health facilities as examples of the latter). One in five adults living in England is a smoker. Among 20 to 34-year-olds this figure is more than one in four. Estimates suggest the cost to the NHS in England of treating smoking-related illnesses is £2.7 billion a year. If you include loss of productivity, the overall burden is estimated to be over £13 billion a year. Smoking harms health because tobacco smoke contains toxins and cancer-causing chemicals: it is not the nicotine that causes the damage. However, nicotine is addictive, which is why so many smokers find it hard to quit.
More than two thirds of smokers say they would like to quit.
Kelly says, “Harm reduction approaches provide an alternative choice, and are more successful when used with licensed nicotine-containing products. Methods such as 'cutting down to quit' may appeal to people who feel unable to quit in one step. 'Smoking less' is an option for those who are not interested in quitting smoking, although the health benefits are not clear. However, for some people this can kick-start a gradual change in behaviour that eventually leads them to quit smoking."
Easier with Nicotine Replacement Products
The draft guidance also says health professionals should advise smokers seeking to cut down as a way to quit, that it is easier to do so when they use nicotine-containing products.
They should also reassure them that such products are a safe and effective way to reduce the harm from cigarettes, and that studies show nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products are safe for up to 5 years of use.
Advisers and health professionals should offer NRT products on prescription to people who smoke, as part of a harm-reduction strategy, says the guidance.
"... also raise wider awareness of the important role of licensed nicotine containing products such as nicotine replacement therapies, in helping people cut down, and then ideally stop using tobacco."
