Giving Up Smoking

There are a number of reasons why people need to stop cigarette smoking. Primarily, you need to stop smoking because it really is dangerous to your health. The word dangerous is very serious when it comes to smoking.

It has been forecast by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that there will be around 10 million deaths from smoking related illnesses in the year 2030 – making smoking the biggest cause of death in the world. Those figures make you realise just how harmful cigarettes really are.

The amount of women smokers are growing and that’s quite worrying. Maybe it’s because women have more income and more freedom to do as they wish, or they lead more stressful lives and feel the need for nicotine. Dying early is a huge price to pay for them.

Being specific, one of the major threats to a large amount of smokers now and in the years to come is lung cancer. This is just one of the cancer types that smokers can develop over a period of time. How does this happen? Smokers inhale large amounts of toxin every time that they take a drag of a cigarette or cigar. Highly dangerous toxins and poisonous chemical compounds then enter your bloodstream through the inhalation. Once in your bloodstream chemical compounds like nicotine travel to the brain destroying many chemical messengers. This can alter some chemical reactions in a smoker’s body like sensations of arousal, alertness and sharpness of memory.

Smoking also affects everybody around you, like members of your family, friends and workmates – even complete strangers who are in the same room as you. They inhale second hand smoke from your burning cigarette and that puts their health at risk. Secondhand smoke is a serious danger and especially to expectant mothers.

Expectant mothers who smoke risk their babies being born with neurological dysfunctions and other related tobacco-related abnormalities.

Expectant mothers who smoke risk their babies being underweight and more likely to die of cot deaths than the babies of non smokers. These babies have more chance of developing allergies and life threatening respiratory diseases. Very good reasons not to smoke in front of pregnant women or near babies and young children.

Unfortunately when we start smoking cigarettes most of us don’t realise just how dangerous they are to our own health and that of those around us. When we do realise we are addicted to nicotine and it’s very difficult to break free from that addiction and help ourselves by quitting smoking.

Do you want to quit? Visit our stop smoking forum for support and advice.

Be Sociable, Share!

•