When you do quit...
Twenty minutes after your last cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse rate starts returning to normal. Eight hours later, the levels of carbon monoxide and oxygen in the blood return to normal. In 48 hours, nerve endings start to re-grow and the ability to taste and smell increases. After a year, risk of dying from heart attack and stroke is reduced by up to half. So if you haven’t yet done it, QUIT now!
Caffeine alternatives
Why is smoking addictive?
Smoking is an addictive vice that is harmful for health. While smoking, the nicotine in cigarettes is absorbed in the blood stream through the lungs. Depending on the amount inhaled, it acts either as a stimulant or as a sedative. It activates the “pleasure centers" in the brain, relieves minor depression, and enhances concentration and short-term memory. All these reasons make smoking addictive.
What goes into a cigarette?
There are approximately 4000 chemicals in a cigarette, most of which are extremely harmful. Apart from nicotine, smokers inhale carbon monoxide, which prevents affected cells from carrying a lot of oxygen. Cancer causing agents like arsenic damage important genes control the growth of cells, causing them to grow abnormally. Tar, the term used to describe the toxic chemicals in cigarettes, stains the smoker's teeth and fingers brown and settles onto the delicate pink tissue of the lungs as well.
Why is smoking injurious?
Smoking is one of the main reasons for cancers of all types, including of the kidney and bladder. It causes respiratory diseases like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which damages the lungs) and chronic bronchitis (inflammation of the bronchi or large airways).
Smoking significantly increases the risk of heart disease by raising levels of "bad cholesterol" and increasing the risk of heart attack.
It also causes reproductive problems and macular degeneration (a leading cause of vision loss and blindness).
Cholesterol - The good, bad and ugly
Special risks for women smokers
Nicotine has different effects on mood in women and men. It appears to reduce anxiety, discontent and aggression in women and enhance these traits in men. Women trying to quit are known to experience greater anxiety and stress than men. Women are not as physically dependent on nicotine as men are, but they are more behaviorally addicted, which is a more powerful deterrent to quitting. Pregnant women who smoke harm not just their own health, but also that of their unborn child.
Why girls may want to quit smoking now
Smoking in your teens
According to the World Health Organization, between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day. Most people who smoke, first light a cigarette when they're teenagers. In fact, 80 percent of smokers began the habit before they turned 18. But if you make it through your teen years without smoking, chances are you'll never become a smoker.
Genetic link
Children whose parents smoke are more likely to get addicted to smoking and find it harder to quit. A smoker who inherits these genes from both parents has an 80 percent greater chance of lung cancer than a smoker without the variants.
Passive smoke
Secondhand smoke – smoke exhaled by smokers or emitted from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes, causes nearly 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in non-smokers, according to studies conducted. Children and infants exposed to tobacco smoke experience ear infections, and asthma, and are at a higher risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Why quit?
About 70 out of every 100 people who smoke wish they didn't. People who quit can actually reverse some of the damage that has been done to their lungs over an extended period of time. Benefits of quitting include decreased risk of lung disease, heart disease and cancer. Apart from this, after quitting one is known to experience an improved sense of smell and taste.
How to quit
When you’re trying to quit, the first two weeks are generally the most critical. Try not to cheat then, because if you can manage without smoking this long, chances are you may never touch a cigarette again. Some measures you can take to help you with quitting include nicotine chewing gum, nicotine patches and counseling. Knowing about and acknowledging the ill-effects of smoking can be a great motivational factor in itself.
When you do quit...
Twenty minutes after your last cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse rate starts returning to normal. Eight hours later, the levels of carbon monoxide and oxygen in the blood return to normal. In 48 hours, nerve endings start to re-grow and the ability to taste and smell increases. After a year, risk of dying from heart attack and stroke is reduced by up to half. So if you haven’t yet done it, QUIT now!
Caffeine alternatives 
