Maybe you want to be able to share more birthdays with your kids and be a better role model for them. Or perhaps you want more energy and to breath easier. How about living to enjoy your retirement and use your money for something rather than cigarettes.
Tobacco smoke hurts anyone who breaths it whether first or second hand. Platelets in your blood stick together and may cause clots. It can also trigger a heart attack. It not only causes the problem but makes it worse.
Your family's health is effected by your smoking. Second hand smoke causes immediate harm to those who breath it.
It also makes tumors grow. So if you have cancer the immune system's tumor fighters that regularly go kill cancer cells are weakened by the tobacco smoke and can't do their job. And breathing the smoke when you already have cancer is doubly dangerous. It can make chemotherapy not do its job.
The lungs of a non-smoker are elastic, they expand when you breathe in and compress when you breathe out. Tobacco smoke damages the delicate lining so they no longer stretch or expand as well. When you quit smoking your coughing and wheezing will lessen and you'll breathe easier.
But continue to smoke and this will cause Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. People with this disease will slowly die from the obvious lack of air.
The next step from COPD is emphysema where lung tissue is destroyed. With this extreme lack of oxygen will make you weak and have to get oxygen from a tank.
People with Diabetes see the benefits of quitting right away. They have more control over their blood sugar levels. Smokers with diabetes have higher risks of amputation, heart and kidney disease, nerve damage, and eye disease that can cause blindness.
Researchers have found that smoking can damage a man's sperm by damaging his DNA. Smoking also reduces a woman's chances of getting pregnant.
Smoking during pregnancy can cause low birth weight, premature delivery, still birth and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS.
Smoking can make the placenta detach from the womb too early and cause premature babies.
Kids with asthma who breath secondhand smoke can have an attack. It can be severe enough to send them to the hospital or even kill them.
Over 300,000 children each year get infections such as ear infections, pneumonia and bronchitis caused from second hand smoke.
Nearly 3,000 nonsmokers die from lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke every year. Every cigarette you smoke damages your lungs. Even at age 65 quitting smoking can add years to your life. Ten years after you quit smoking your risk of dying from lung cancer drops by half.
In 2003 the city of Pueblo, Colorado did a public smoking ban in all public areas and the number of people hospitalized for heart attacks dropped 41% in three years.
If you don't smoke you can recover from surgery faster.
Your chance of cancer of the bladder, throat, esophagus, or mouth is cut in half within 5 years of quitting. One of every three cancer deaths in the U.S. wouldn't happen if no one smoked.
