It’s never too late to quit smoking. Quitting smoking now improves your health and reduces your risk of heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and other smoking-related illnesses. It is one of the best things you will ever do for your health. It is much easier when you get the right support and there are plenty of options to choose from.
Even if you’ve tried it before, maybe more than once, you can still succeed. What you have already learned will help you achieve your goal of becoming a former smoker.
Check out these 10 reasons to quit smoking and why you should keep that stick away now. Let’s do it!
Also, Read Lung Disorder Chronic Bronchitis: Causes, Symptoms, Treatment
1. Tobacco Affects Your Appearance Almost Immediately:
Everything stinks! From your skin to your entire house, your clothes, your fingers, and your breath. Tobacco causes the yellowing of teeth and creates excess dental plaque. Smoking tobacco and using smokeless tobacco causes bad breath.
Physically, tobacco makes your skin wrinkled, making you look older faster. Smoking ages the skin prematurely by wearing away the proteins that give the skin elasticity, depleting it of vitamin A and reducing blood flow.
These wrinkles are more noticeable around the lips and eyes, and tobacco also makes the skin feel leathery and dry. Smoking tobacco increases the risk of developing psoriasis, a non-infectious inflammatory skin condition that leaves itchy, oozing red patches all over the body.
2. It puts the health of your friends and family at risk – stop this destructive cycle.
More than 1 million people die each year as a result of passive smoking. Non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke are at risk of developing lung cancer. Cigarettes remain an important cause of accidental fires and subsequent deaths.
E-cigarettes also expose non-smokers and bystanders to nicotine and other harmful chemicals. Exposure to secondhand smoke may increase the risk of progression from tuberculosis infection to active disease. Secondhand smoke exposure is linked to type 2 diabetes.
Please stop putting the lives of your parents, children, friends, and spouse at risk alongside with yours. Even if you smoke on the road or roof, recall that the air that will get polluted will enter someone else’s nose too.
3. Smoking or using e-cigarettes near children endangers their health and safety:
Children of smokers suffer from reduced lung function, which affects them in the form of chronic respiratory disorders even in adulthood. Exposure of children to e-cigarette liquids continues to pose serious risks. There is a risk of the device leaking or the liquid being swallowed by children.
Moreover, e-cigarettes are known to cause serious injuries, including burns, from fires and explosions. School-aged children exposed to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke are also at risk of developing asthma through inflammation of the airways in the lungs. Children under two who are exposed to secondhand smoke in the home can develop middle ear disease, which can lead to hearing loss and deafness.
4. Tobacco Use has Negative Social Consequences:
You want to be a good example for your children, friends, and loved ones. Tobacco use can negatively affect social interactions and relationships.
Quitting means there are no restrictions on where you can go. You can socialize without feeling isolated or having to go outside to smoke. It can make you more productive. You won’t have to stop what you’re doing to smoke all the time.
5. It’s Expensive – You can Spend Money on more Important Things:
Tobacco use affects the health and productivity of workers, making them prone to missing days at work. Tobacco use contributes to poverty by diverting household expenditure from basic needs such as food and shelter to tobacco.
Tobacco use burdens the global economy with an estimated Rs 10.18 trillion in healthcare costs for the treatment of tobacco-related diseases and the loss of human capital due to tobacco-related diseases and deaths.
6. One of the Most Important Reasons to Quit Smoking: All Forms of Tobacco are Deadly!
Every year more than 8 million people die from tobacco. Tobacco kills half of its users. Using tobacco in any form robs you of your health and causes debilitating diseases. Shisha smoking is just as harmful as other forms of tobacco use.
Chewing tobacco can cause mouth cancer, tooth loss, brown teeth, white spots, and gum disease. Nicotine in smokeless tobacco is more easily absorbed than smoking cigarettes, making it more addictive.
7. When you buy tobacco, you are financially supporting an industry that exploits farmers and children and pedals disease and death:
Tobacco farmers are exposed to ill health from nicotine absorbed through the skin, as well as exposure to heavy pesticides and tobacco dust. In some countries, children are employed in tobacco farming, which affects not only their health but also their ability to attend school.
Tobacco use can exacerbate poverty, as tobacco users are at much higher risk of contracting and dying prematurely from cancer, heart attacks, respiratory or other tobacco-related illnesses, depriving families of much-needed income and increasing health care costs.
The vast majority employed in the overall tobacco sector earn very little while the big tobacco companies reap huge profits.
8. Heated Tobacco Products are Harmful to Health:
HTPs expose users to toxic emissions, many of which can cause cancer. Heated tobacco products are tobacco products in their own right, so switching from conventional tobacco products to HTP does not mean quitting smoking.
There is insufficient evidence to support the claim that heated tobacco products are less harmful compared to conventional cigarettes.
9. Tobacco breaks hearts:
Just a few cigarettes a day, occasional smoking, or passive smoking increases the risk of heart disease. Tobacco smokers have up to twice the risk of stroke and four times the risk of heart disease.
Tobacco smoke damages the arteries of the heart, causing plaque build-up and blood clots to form, thereby restricting blood flow and ultimately leading to heart attack and stroke. The use of nicotine and tobacco products increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Also, Read All About Heart Attack: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis & Treatment
10. Using Tobacco, Especially Smoking, Takes Your Breath Away…
Tobacco use is responsible for 25% of all cancer deaths worldwide. Smokers are up to twenty-two times more likely to develop lung cancer in their lifetime than non-smokers. Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and accounts for more than two-thirds of lung cancer deaths worldwide.
One in five tobacco smokers will develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD during their lifetime, especially people who start smoking in childhood and adolescence, as tobacco smoke significantly slows lung growth and development.
Smoking can worsen asthma in adults, limit their activity, contribute to disability, and increase the risk of severe asthma attacks requiring emergency care.
Tobacco smoking more than doubles the risk of tuberculosis converting from latent to active and is also known to worsen the natural progression of the disease. About one-quarter of the world’s population has latent tuberculosis. These are the top 10 reasons to quit smoking and we have another 10 here.
