Benefits of Quitting Smoking
The benefits of quitting smoking are pretty intuitive, but the American Cancer Society would like you to be aware of just how many benefits there are. And while scientific research technically can’t prove that smoking causes cancer and overall bad health, everybody knows that it’s true because it’s a matter of common sense and more than just mere coincidence that smoking is strongly associated with developing cancer. But even if we know that it’s better to quit smoking, that doesn’t mean that it’s so easy to.
The reason it’s so hard to quit smoking is because of the addictive properties of nicotine. People can develop a physical or a psychological addiction to a drug, and with tobacco, they find themselves craving nicotine and developing an emotional dependence on it.
At first, smoking gives people a high as the brain responds to the nicotine, but over time the body becomes accustomed to it and it needs higher and higher levels to achieve the same high that it used to at a lower level. They may also experience negative effects of withdrawal like headaches, shaking and insomnia, so smokers start to increase the amount that they smoke and it eventually becomes an addiction.
You may need a quit smoking aid to quit smoking right now. Here’s one persons story of how they quit smoking and the quit smoking aids they used.
It’s an old story and a cliche, but like many cliches it’s based in truth: Quitting smoking is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I began smoking as a teenager, dabbling with cigarettes, cloves and “bedes” – Indian cigarettes – near the end of my high school years. As a freshman in college I didn’t smoke at all, but then at some point between my freshman and sophomore years, I became a smoker. And I needed a quit smoking aid many, many times over before I could officially become a former smoker.
My personal quit smoking aid of choice was the best one: Fear. Fear of cancer, heart disease, and imminent death. My family – both sides of my family – have medical histories littered with the above. My maternal grandfather, for example, smoked for sixty-five years. A large, jovial and vivacious man, he lived into his early 80s. But the last six months of his life were spent withering away in the hospital as lung cancer slowly and surely killed him. There is no better quit smoking aid than that for anyone.
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