REVIEW: Cigarettes are among the world’s most profitable drugs. They are also the only legal ones that, if used as intended, will turn most of their users into addicts and kill every second smoker. In addition, every cigarette smoked takes 13 minutes off a person’s life span.
Quitting and Benefits
If a person has smoked heavily for a long time, does it pay to quit? And the answer is yes! About 80 percent of lung cancers and half of bladder cancers could be prevented if people simply stopped smoking.
Smokers who quit begin to heal almost immediately. As the nicotine and carbon monoxide leave the body, the smoking-related risk for heart disease decreases dramatically. Although the risk for cancer decreases more slowly, the danger lessens as the weeks and months go by.
There are other payoffs to quitting: a sense of victory, increased self-esteem, pleasant breath, better-tasting food, increased endurance, improved health and energy, a feeling of well-being, and freedom from an inconvenient, unpopular, and costly habit. Quitting may also open the way to more job opportunities.
Americans often overreact to the most trivial of risks while ignoring much more substantial threats to their health and safety. For example, every second smoker will die from some disease directly connected to the habit. Smokers will also lose an average of 14 years from their normal life expectancy, or 13 minutes for every cigarette smoked. Yet many people react more forcefully to evidence of a one-in-a-million risk of getting cancer from chemicals found in drinking water!
It’s time to get life back into perspective. The biggest favor you can do your body is to kick the habit and freely breathe clean air again.