The Benefits If You Choose Quit Smoking

If you were to quit smoking today and rack up all the savings incurred, you could have saved more than a quarter million dollars within the next 20 years. Think it’s another exaggerative or inflated figure used to lure smokers away from their habit? This article will show you bits by bits how quickly it adds up.

To begin with, let’s calculate the money you spend every year by figuring out how many pack of cigarettes you smoke per day and multiply that number by 365. Right now, the current average price for a pack of cigarettes plus taxes is around $4.50, and using this figure, a pack a day smoker burn through $1,643 per year.

Be forewarned that smoking is a very expensive habit, and never exclude the possibilities that as nicotine addiction goes deeper (which it would, and in rather short time too), you may find yourself upping the number of cigarettes to more than 2 packs a day over the course of years. The annual smoking expense above is an accurate long term average, valid even for those currently smoking under a pack a day.

Until you quit smoking, the financial consequences of lighting up stretch far beyond the cost of cigarettes. For instance, try quoting a 20-year health and term life insurance now and you’ll find non-smokers paying a breathtaking $3,000 less every year in premiums than smokers. It doesn’t matter even if you think “Oh… I never have any intention to buy health and life insurance anyway”, the huge uninsured medical bills associated with illness from smoking in long-run will be an effective wallet-burning substitution.

Need to sell your car? On a trade-in, dealers can easily knock off more than $2,000 just because the car’s interior has been smoked out. The same applied to homes as well, only on a bigger scale. What’s more – numerous studies and surveys found that smokers earn anywhere from 4% to 11% less than their non-smoking counterpart. That’s another few hundred dollars down the drain every year.

These costs don’t even factor in the new paint or wall treatments for your rooms, the professional drapery and carpet cleaning, or the hefty bill for teeth cleanings just to get the yellowish stains and odors out. You need to do them regularly or your social life may go limbo. How often have you clean your clothes one extra time just to remove that smoke residue tainted there? Let’s get all these totaled up and it’s not something negligible.

From the very moment that you smoke your last cigarette, your body is doing all it can to eliminate whatever it cannot use. Our bodies are like a huge conglomerate that owns many different manufacturing businesses. And each of those manufacturing plants are the trillions of cells that our body houses. When we add anything to our body, air, water, food, or any organic or inorganic substance, our body looks to identify it and send it to where it can be used in the manufacturing process. And what is our body manufacturing? Hormones, blood, lymph fluids, saliva, tears, new cells, whatever it needs to stay alive and functioning as well as possible.

So anything that our body cannot use is either stored or eliminated. Anything that comes into our body from cigarette smoking is not needed by our body. I never heard of a normal human being having a deficiency of any of the more than 4000 chemical compounds that a burning cigarette supplies to us. So what isn’t stored is released. Nicotine is one of the chemicals that leaves our body quickly. So quickly that it is felt almost immediately upon the cessation of your last cigarette. That’s the normal discomfort that a smoker feels that they associate with needing another cigarette. Some think it’s a craving, but it’s not. It’s just a mild sensation that goes away when you smoke. In most smokers it is so mild that if they are distracted by anything they will completely forget they were looking for a smoke.

So here’s what happens within 24 hours of your last smoke:

The human body is amazingly resilient. Within the first 20 minutes of quitting, the healing process begins. The benefits will continue to improve your health and quality of life for years. When you quit smoking, the benefits begin within minutes of your last cigarette.

At 20 minutes after quitting:

Blood pressure decreases
Pulse rate drops
Body temperature of hands and feet increases

At 8 hours:

Carbon monoxide level in blood drops to normal
Oxygen level in blood increases to normal

At 24 hours:

Chance of a heart attack decreases

So I’m sure you have some personal reasons to quit smoking, and it’s time to start focusing on them until you are so fed up with smoking and not having the control you want that you are ready to quit right now.

If you can muster up that kind of intensity on your own, that’s great! If not, don’t worry, all is not lost. Either way, when you need some help quitting smoking, there are a number of options available. One of the most common options is nicotine replacement therapy or NRT. You might know it as the patch. Another form is drug therapy, where your doctor will prescribe a powerful anti-depressant drug like wellbutrin to help you stabilize your emotions so you can quit. Another method with great success is hypnosis to quit smoking.

So why stop smoking?

o Within 20 minutes, your blood pressure, pulse rate and the temperature of your hands and feet return to normal.
o Within 8 hours, oxygen level in the blood increases to normal as carbon monoxide in blood decreases.
o In 24 hours, your risk of heart attack starts dropping.
o In 2 days, your nerve endings start to regrow, and your senses of smell and taste improve.
o In 3 days, breathing gets easier and lung capacity increases.
o Within 2 weeks to 3 months, circulation gets better; lung function improves up to 30%, and walking gets easier.
o Within 1 to 9 months, lung cilia regrow; coughing, sinus problems and shortness of breath decrease, and you’ll have more energy.
o After 7 years, ex-smokers’ mortality rates approach those of people who have never smoked.

It is very common for an individual to experience the following symptoms or side effects after you don’t smoke anymore.

o After you stop smoking, you might feel a little lightheaded or dizzy. This is due to the fact that about 40% of the oxygen in each red blood cell is replaced by carbon monoxide when you smoke.
o After you quit smoking, you might cough more. Smoking causes your body to produce extra mucus to try and protect your lungs from the additives in tobacco. The toxins in tobacco smoke paralyze and eventually kill the cilia (hair like cells) that wave back and forth to sweep particles out of the lungs. Once you stop, you don’t need the extra mucus; therefore, the cilia that are left move back into action and you cough to eliminate the excess mucus.
o After you don’t smoke anymore, you might experience feelings of withdrawal. This is due to your entire body being used to the artificial stimulation of nicotine and the 4,000 plus other chemicals in tobacco smoke.
o After you quit, emotionally, you may feel slightly depressed, anxious, antsy and jumpy. It is also quite normal to experience insomnia or have trouble concentrating.

I am often asked if there is an herbal to help with smoking. The primary quit smoking herbal I would suggest would be lobelia. Lobelia’s common name is Indian tobacco. Lobelia contains about 0.48% pyridine (piperidine) alkaloids composed mainly of lobeline with lesser amounts of lobelanine, lobelanidine, and other alkaloids. Lobelia, also contains resin, gum, lipids, and chelidonic acid. Lobelia is a very effective expectorant. Although it has a long history as an herb to curb smoking, it also has a long history in the use of asthma.

Lobelia causes broncho-constriction and is a respiratory stimulant. Lobelia also binds to nicotine acetylcholine receptors in ganglions, thus promoting the release of norepinephrine and epinephrine. It is this action on adrenal hormone secretion that is responsible for lobelia’s therapeutic effects. Lobelia is used to lessen nicotine withdrawal, as it has a similar action to nicotine.

Ingestion of toxic levels of lobelia as a quit smoking herbal usually result in vomiting thereby lessening the likelihood of a fatal outcome. As with any intensive dietary program, you should consult a healthcare professional.

Why should you quit smoking? Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 chemicals and when it’s inhaled the come together to form a tar like substance that sticks to the mouth, throat, lungs and stomach. Not only do the chemicals cause harm to the areas that they come into direct contact with, but it also impairs the ability for the body to receive oxygen rich blood. People who smoke are more than double or triple likely to get cataracts. Second hand smoke can cause damage to those around you, even family and friends who choose not to smoke.

There are many benefits of quitting smoking. Within one month of quitting, you will decrease your heart rate, and the level of carbon monoxide in your blood will also decrease, as will your risk of heart attacks. The long term benefits are multiple, including reducing risks for strokes, lung cancer, stomach cancer, bladder cancer, coronary heart disease, such as heart attack, chronic lunch diseases and chronic cough. If you have been a quitter for 5 years or more, your risk for a stroke is the same as the risk of a non-smoker. If you have been a quitter for 15 years or more, your heart attack risk is the same of a non-smoker.

You will need to have a serious mental commitment to quitting, if you choose to do so. You should have a quit date, as this is helpful in preparing your mind. You should mentally refer to yourself as a non-smoker and this can also prepare yourself mentally, for when you really are a non-smoker. You should get rid of all of your cigarettes and things that may tempt you to smoke from your home, workplace and car. Visit your chiropractor in Schaumburg for more healthy and helpful tips for smoking cigarettes.