Health Effects of Smoking

Quitting smoking is a major challenge and many people try to do it alone because they are fearful of others judging them if they fail. The truth is most people who quit smoking require several attempts to do so and by having the proper support group or an accountability partner can greatly increase your chances of successfully quitting.

When choosing an accountability partner there are several options; friends, family or other quitters are great choices. Friends and family are easy to trust and communicate feelings, thoughts and beliefs too while fellow quitters understand more of what you are going through. Whoever you decide on they should be fair, understanding and firm. Choose someone that you feel comfortable talking with and trustworthy.

By finding a person to help hold you accountable you add a new line of defense when quitting smoking. After quitting you will be faced with feelings, thoughts and desires urging you to give up and smoke. The voice in your head urging you to smoke “just one” can be very convincing at times, especially on those days when nothing seems to go right. Having a person to call gives you a chance to calm down and let the craving pass. Cravings tend to pass quickly if you change your focus.

Quitting smoking requires honesty, with yourself and your accountability partner. If you aren’t honestly trying to quit and you don’t tell your partner when you have slipped you aren’t utilizing their help. Instead you will continue to hide your failed attempts which could lead to a total relapse.

Guilt and fear of failure are common among people trying to quit smoking but the key is to not give up. You won’t need an accountability partner forever and the more time you get under your belt not smoking the less you will require their assistance. You could be saving your life, in the least you are adding years to it and improving the quality of life you now live. Don’t be shy or ashamed to ask for help, most people get great satisfaction from helping others.

Properly preparing yourself to quit smoking will pay off in the end and remember, you don’t have to do it alone. Increase your odds of success by getting the support you need to successfully quit smoking and stay quit. Replace the guilt and fear of quitting with determination and imagine how great your life will be when you finally take back control and break your smoking addiction.

According to 2010 statistics; 1 out of 5 adults in the U.S. smoke, 45.3 million people, however some are smoking fewer cigarettes. Unfortunately there is no safe level of smoking and 50 percent of adults who continue to smoke will die from a smoking related illness.

Tobacco use is still the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S. Between the years of 2005 and 2010 American adults who smoke decreased from 20.9 percent to 19.3 percent, which is nearly 3 million fewer smokers.

Even though nicotine is highly addictive you still can quit smoking if you set your mind to it. Nearly 450,000 Americans die of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke each year. Besides losing people we love smoking costs the US about $96 billion each year in direct medical costs.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths are attributed to exposure to secondhand smoke. According to the 2006 U.S. Surgeon General’s report The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Both the Surgeon General and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have concluded that eliminating smoking from all indoor areas is the only way to fully protect people from exposure.

Policies that prohibit smoking in all indoor areas

• Eliminate secondhand smoke exposure.
• Improve indoor air quality.
• Reduce negative health outcomes among nonsmokers.
• Decrease cigarette consumption.
• Encourage smokers to quit.
• Change social norms regarding the acceptability of smoking.

In terms of specific health risks, the 2009 IOM report Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects: Making Sense of the Evidence concluded that secondhand smoke exposure can cause a heart attack, even brief exposure to secondhand smoke could plausibly trigger a heart attack and smoke-free policies result in fewer heart attacks.

Current evidence from more than a dozen studies in cities, states, and countries indicates that smoke-free policies yield immediate cardiovascular benefits. Jurisdictions that have implemented smoke-free policies have reported average reductions in heart attack hospitalizations of 8% to 17%. In 2010, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin passed laws that made workplaces and public places smoke-free. The new laws represent clear and measurable progress toward saving lives and protecting people in these states.

By December 2010, a total of 25 states and the District of Columbia had comprehensive smoke-free laws that prohibit smoking in workplaces, restaurants, bars, and other public places. However, 88 million nonsmoking Americans are still exposed to secondhand smoke, and many areas of the country do not have smoke-free laws.

People are getting news each day that smoking is killing them. They suffer from heart attacks, stroke and cancer yet they are unable or unwilling to quit smoking. The hold it has on them is stronger than the fear of death itself.

Nicotine is a powerful drug but it isn’t the physical addiction that keeps people smoking when faced with death or causing harm to their loved ones, it is the psychological addiction. The mind is the most powerful mechanism that keeps people lighting up each day; hour after hour. It is also the mind that can break this terrible addiction forever and turn the tables on death.

Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from a smoking related illness; between 40,000 and 70,000 are non-smokers. They are the ones exposed to secondhand smoke.

The majority of smokers really want to quit smoking and they will try several times throughout their lives but unless they change the way they think when it comes to smoking they will likely fail at some point. You have the power to quit smoking! Learn how to change the way you think and begin healing. Your body will almost instantly start the healing process once you quit and you will no longer be exposing others to the harmful effects or polluting the environment.

There are many health effects of smoking, both physical and mental, and when you quit smoking you are going to have additional barriers to overcome. Nicotine is a powerful drug that regulates a person’s mood, it can act as a depressant or a stimulant, depending on your mood and the time of the day.

Studies have shown that people who suffer from major depression before they quit smoking may encounter an episode after quitting. However, people that haven’t struggled with depression in the past are unlikely to have a major episode. If a minor episode of depression occurs it will likely start the day you quit, last for a couple weeks and be gone within a month.

Don’t let the fear of depression keep you from quitting smoking. It is still the best thing you can do for your health. Talk to your doctor about the various options available to you; there are medications that can help manage nicotine withdrawal while at the same time treating depression.

As you quit smoking it is important to learn about the signs of depression, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml . Identify your specific feelings at the time you seem depressed. Make sure you aren’t actually tired, lonely, bored or hungry. Focus on the specific mood and address it. Keep in mind the reasons why you are quitting smoking and don’t view it as a negative, instead view it as a positive lifestyle change that is going to improve the quality of your life and of those around you.

It is normal to feel sad after quitting but don’t complicate matters more by giving into temptation and feeling additional sadness and guilt for not sticking to your decision to quit.

Even in the face of withdrawal symptoms that can challenge the strongest of wills, millions of Americans have conquered their smoking “habit,” step by step. According to the U.S. government’s Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), for every one of the 46 million American smokers, there is an ex-smoker who has successfully quit smoking.

True, it’s not easy. The nicotine in cigarettes can command both a physical and mental hold that can be tough to overcome. For some, nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine and after quitting; there’s no question about it, sometimes you are going to think, “I’ve got to have one.”

For many smokers who want to quit smoking, willpower alone isn’t enough to beat the yearning. For them, smoking cessation products, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved, may reduce the cravings and other withdrawal symptoms.

Many people have used OTC nicotine replacement products such as the patch or gum to help them quit. While these products can ease the symptoms resulting from the physical addiction to nicotine, group or individual counseling and encouragement from family and friends are critical to help address the psychological effects of smoking.

“You really have to be committed to quitting smoking,” says Celia Jaffe Winchell, M.D., a psychiatrist and FDA’s medical team leader for addiction drug products, “and when you’ve made the decision to quit smoking, commit to using whatever it takes to quit.”

Smoking – The Killer Addiction

Imagine: Two jumbo jets crash every day and not a single person walks away alive. That, then-Surgeon General C. Everett Coop told Americans in 1989, is the number of people who die each day from smoking.

Cigarettes alone kill more than 400,000 Americans each year–more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides, illegal drugs, and fires combined. And smoking can harm not just the smoker, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and other experts, but also family members and others who breathe “secondhand smoke.”

Given that cigarettes are known killers, why do so many Americans continue to smoke?

Seventy percent of adult smokers want to quit smoking completely, according to a survey by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the nicotine in cigarettes is an addictive drug that makes quitting difficult, as confirmed by the 1988 Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health.

“There is little doubt,” wrote smoking researcher M.A.H. Russell in 1974, “that if it were not for the nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke than they are to blow bubbles or light sparklers.
As with other addictive drugs, people can experience withdrawal when they get less nicotine than they are used to. Symptoms can include irritability, frustration, anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, restlessness, and craving for tobacco.

One reason cigarettes in particular are so addictive, Winchell says, is that a person gets a “very rapid and effective dose” of nicotine by inhaling the smoke. Within seconds of inhaling a cigarette, nicotine enters the lungs and then travels directly to the brain.

Tobacco use “is not just some bad habit, but a powerful addiction that warrants appropriate medical treatment,” says Michael Fiore, M.D., director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin Medical School.

As a rule, Fiore says, people who smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day and want to quit should use an FDA-approved smoking cessation product.

It is a common statistic that has been around for some time now but over 400,000 people die each year due to a smoking related illness. One out of three smokers will die because of their habit. The problem is which one will it be? According to a Forever Free publication, that person will lose, on average, 24 years of life.

Those are the kind of odds we would like to see at the track or Vegas but death – I don’t think so. Even if you aren’t the one just think about the quality of your life. Each cigarette you smoke introduces over 4,000 chemicals into your body, many of which are toxic and harmful. When was the last time you jogged down the street for fun and felt good? What about playing in the park with your children, kind of hard to do with a cigarette hanging from your mouth.

To measure how harmful smoking is you need to look more than just the health effects of smoking but how it affects society, the body, and non-smokers.

When you quit smoking you greatly reduce the odds. Once you quit smoking your body quickly begins to heal itself. There are nearly instant benefits to quitting.

Within 20 minutes after you smoke that last cigarette, your body begins a series of changes that continue for years.

20 Minutes After Quitting
Your heart rate drops.
12 hours After Quitting
Carbon monoxide level 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 nonsmoker’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 nonsmoker’s.

Think of the countless cigarette butts that are flicked in the street, thrown in the gutter, or tossed in the lake each year. The number must be staggering… It is likely that a large percentage of used tobacco products are disposed of improperly and end up in places they shouldn’t.

Cigarette butts are the most common form of environmental litter in the world, with around 5.6 trillion cigarettes smoked every year. Cigarette waste accounts for almost a third of the total amount of litter found on US shorelines alone.

Not only is seeing this form of environmental litter disgusting but it is affecting the local wildlife. Tobacco use in the United States costs our country money, even in a time where the recession doesn’t feel like it is over.

In the U.S. alone it is estimated that 16 percent of pregnant women smoke while they are pregnant. Smoking during pregnancy is directly for hundreds of infant deaths annually.

While the mother smokes, unborn babies are exposed to nicotine and when born they can suffer from withdrawals consistent with other infants reported to be exposed to other drugs. Not a way a child should have to enter this world. Infants are born with low birth weights, they display signs of stress, are at risk from sudden infant death syndrome, not to mention other learning and behavioral problems.

Studies have also shown that mothers who smoke a pack a day or more during pregnancy nearly doubles the risk that their child will become addicted to tobacco if they try smoking.