How Long Before I Feel Better After I Stop Smoking
How Long Before I Feel Better After I Stop Smoking. One of the main reasons that people quit smoking is to enjoy the health benefits that doing this will have for them. But it is likely that few people actually understand how fast improved health will begin. The initial health benefits to not smoking actually occur within less than half an hour after the last cigarette leaves the smokers lips. The first improvement occurs twenty minutes after putting down the cigarette. It is at that point that a persons pulse rate and blood pressure will go back to the levels they would be if they were not smoking. Then, eight hours later, both the nicotine and the carbon monoxide levels in the bloodstream will diminish by fifty percent. At the same time oxygen levels in the bloodstream will return to what they should normally be. As well, there will be improvements in circulation. After a whole day has passed the carbon monoxide will have been completely purged from a persons body. Even this quickly the lungs will begin to get rid of the bad stuff that smoking leaves behind, the bits, and the mucus. Already the chance of having a heart attack is diminishing. By a full two days there is no longer any nicotine remaining. Despite it only being forty eight hours since the last cigarette taste and smell begins to recover. Once three full days have passed breathing is not as difficulty. This is because the bronchial tubes are able to relax. The former smoker will even feel their energy levels improve. The next chances come slower. Between two weeks and three months the circulation continues to improve. During the period between three and nine months after the last cigarette further improvement is seen as coughing and breathing difficulties continue to lessen. By this point lung function has improved by ten percent. This may seem small but when you consider what smoking does to the lungs it is an excellent beginning. The former smoker is also less tired than they once were.
By the first anniversary of quitting smoking the former smoker will see their risk of heart attack drop by fifty percent to that of a smoker. Nothing much happens now that can be seen. But improvements in the body continue. By the time it has been ten years of no smoking the risk of lung cancer has dropped by fifty percent in comparison to that of a smoker.
At fifteen years it becomes only slightly more of a risk than that of a non-smoker. The same is true of the risk of heart attack. What all this means is that the healing process starts fast and then slows, but if a person can keep away from cigarettes once they stop than their health will greatly improve until it will be almost as if they had never smoked.
Quitting will be difficult, especially for those who have smoked for a long time, but the health advantages far outweigh the inconvenience of stopping. Stick to it and as the days pass you will notice how much better you feel.
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