While it might take time for cigarette cravings to pass, there are some well- known benefits from stopping smoking today.
When you stop smoking, a transformation toward better health begins in your body instantly. These are effects that will make a difference in how you feel physically.
In less than half an hour, your blood pressure will lower back into a healthier range. When your blood pressure is within a healthy range, you’ll feel better. If it’s been really high, you’ll stop having feelings of dizziness and headaches that can be a side effect of high blood pressure.
When you smoke, you might not notice it because it happens gradually, but nicotine alters your sense of taste and smell. Once you stop smoking, within two days, your sense of taste and smell will be the way it used to be.
Within three days, you’ll find yourself bouncing back and feeling like you have more stamina to do your daily activities and the leisurely activities you enjoy.
Within fourteen days, your blood flow will improve, making it easier on your organs, especially your heart, to pump blood.
Over the next twelve weeks after you stop smoking, you’ll notice that it’s easier to breathe and you’ll begin to lose your smoker’s cough. Within twenty-four weeks, you’ll lose that feeling that you can’t get your lungs to expand enough to draw in a deep breath.
By the time you reach the one-year celebration of having stopped smoking, you will have cut your chances of having a heart attack by fifty percent.
There are also some longer-term health benefits that begin the very moment you stop smoking. The clock that started toward serious health risks begins to backtrack. Some people don’t want to stop smoking because they feel like there’s no use, they’ve already damaged their bodies.
When you start smoking, a clock starts ticking, with each passing day drawing you closer to the health risks and damage associated with smoking. What you might not realize is that you can unwind this damage. You can cut your risk of a heart attack or stroke or cancer just as if you were never a smoker.
After ten years of not smoking, you’re less at risk of getting smoking related cancers – including lung and mouth cancer.
After fifteen years without smoking, the chances that you could get heart disease falls into the same category as someone who didn’t smoke. Your life expectancy is no longer shortened because of cigarette smoking and you can go on to live an active, healthy life.
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