Our society has become so much addicted to cigarettes. In fact, even children as young as 7 can be seen smoking in streets and in schools. While you might find numerous remedies to quit smoking, it is still important that you adopt healthy lifestyle changes to reverse the effects of smoking on your body.
What happens if you don’t quit smoking?
One puff of cigarettes contains thousands of chemicals, which include pesticides, insecticides, rat poison, formaldehyde, and other gross compounds that can significantly affect your health. Among the over 4,000 compounds present in a cigarette stick, around 200 have been shown to cause cancer. There is definitely no wonder why smoking causes great damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, and other vital organs, including the brain. Because the smoke mainly travels through the lungs, they are the ones who get severely damaged first. And it is very hard to overcome respiratory problems, particularly obstructive pulmonary disease disorder (OCPD) and lung cancer. While drugs and treatments are available, they are inexpensive and don’t guarantee that you will completely recover from the said diseases.
Smoking may even be particularly harmful for women who are pregnant. It increases the risk of miscarriage, and obstructs the normal development of the baby that is why most babies born of smoking men are often underweight and smaller in size.
There are also many evidences that children are highly susceptible to the dangers of smoking. In fact, exposure to secondhand smoke is among the leading causes of asthma in children. Furthermore, those who start smoking at a very young age (as young as 11), are expected to have an early death than those who started in their 20s.
With all these terrifying consequences of smoking, there is an urgent need to quit. Here are some tips to overcome the health problems associated with smoking cigarettes.
1) Make the right decision. Stop smoking NOW. If you are a smoker, now is the perfect time to stop. By doing so, you are not only protecting yourself from the gross effects of smoking but as well as the health of other people, particularly those who don’t smoke.
2) Get the support you need. Discuss with your family and friends about your decision to quit smoking and seek their support. Studies show that people have better chances of quitting successfully when they have a strong support system.
3) Find the strategy that best suits you. Again, there are many ways to quit smoking. You can take advantage of prescription medications like Chantix. Ask your doctor about the different quit smoking methods and with his or her help, choose the one that is most suitable for you.
4) Help your body heal. Smoking is like drinking a small dose of poison every day. It may feel like it doesn’t have any effect on your body NOW, but sooner or later it will backfire. So it’s not enough that you stop. You must also help your body recover from the ill effects of cigarette smoke. How? The answer is simple. Follow a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and make sure you have having enough rest and sleep.
5) Consider detoxifying. A natural way to flush toxins from your body is to drink plenty of water. But you can always ask your doctor or therapist for other ways to remove the toxins cigarette smoke has implanted in your body.
