Stop smoking
Solutions that can make quitting easier.
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Stopping smoking isn’t easy, but the benefits are huge. Quitting smoking can add years to your life, and reduce your chances of disease as you get older.
We can help you find a way to quit smoking for good. Talk to us to get tailored recommendations from an expert clinician.
The first thing you need to quit smoking is the will to become a non-smoker. The second is to get advice on how best to do that. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for quitting smoking, but there are some tried and trusted methods that we can help you with. Prescription treatments have shown to be effective at helping many people to quit.
There are lots of ways, so it’s a matter of finding the right one for you. Many statistics show that you’re more likely to quit with the help of stop smoking aids and treatments, but with so many available, finding the right one might take a little time. Some of the most popular include medications and nicotine withdrawal products.
Stopping smoking can have a profound effect on your health and your bank balance (usually you’ll spend less on cigarettes and have more money). It significantly reduces the risk of various cancers and cardiovascular diseases. But even this is just scratching the surface in terms of the health effects associated with smoking. Food should taste nicer. Your skin might improve. In fact, you might feel the benefit all over – there’s barely a part of the body that isn’t affected by it.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
It’s been estimated that it can take some smokers 30 or more attempts to quit. So if you have a few hiccups along the way, that’s totally normal. But if you stay determined, there’s every chance that you can stop smoking forever.
And once you’ve quit, you’ll likely notice some positive changes in the body over time. These little milestones are massively beneficial to your health, and knowing what’s going on inside (and not solely focusing on the negative experiences of quitting smoking), can be a great motivator. This is where the stop smoking timeline comes in.
It can take just 20 minutes for signs of improvement to take effect as your heart rate should return to its normal rate. After eight hours, carbon monoxide levels in the body can drop by as much as half, and your oxygen levels should also increase. The carbon monoxide should have completely left your body after two days, and your lungs can start to recover. Your sense of taste and smell should start to return to normal too. And the following day, your bronchial tubes can relax again, helping you to breathe more easily.
Over the next few weeks, the blood flow to your heart should increase considerably and after just three to nine months, any coughing and wheezing ought to disappear as your lung capacity increases. Long term, it should only take a year for your risk of a heart attack to have halved, and in ten years, the same for lung cancer risks.
As an added bonus, you won’t spend as much on tobacco. So you not only have the energy to do more, you’ll be able to better afford it too.
How smoking damages your health
Smoking increases your risk of various cancers, including cancers of the throat, mouth, liver, lungs, stomach and pancreas. And this is just a fraction of the cancers associated with it. Heart disease, strokes, various vascular diseases, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), pneumonia and impotence in men can also all be caused by smoking.
It’s not just your own health as a smoker that’s at risk. Passive smoking (breathing in the smoke of other peoples’ tobacco) increases your chances of developing all of the conditions mentioned above by as much as a quarter, with young people at particular risk.
Quitting cold turkey can be very difficult, and the NHS website suggests that just 3% of people that try manage it, but separate studies suggest it’s the most effective method in some cases. The trick is to find the best approach for you and make sure you get the right support, whatever route you take.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
They might not be for everyone, but some treatments have been shown to be highly effective for many people who have successfully quit smoking.
It should be noted though that they will not work alone; a commitment to becoming a non-smoker and some willpower are still needed if you choose to stop smoking this way.
There are two licensed treatments that can help you to stop smoking, which work in different ways. The first helps to reduce the severity of cravings that make quitting smoking so difficult, and can minimise some of the more problematic symptoms (such as mood swings and insomnia). This treatment usually takes around nine days before you notice its effects, and you’ll take it for 12 weeks.
The other type was originally prescribed to treat depression. The science behind how it works isn’t entirely clear, but it’s understood that it has an effect on the part of the brain that’s connected to addiction. It should be started a week or two before you quit smoking and the course lasts for around eight weeks.
As well as treatments, there are stop smoking aids that can usually be bought over the counter. One of the most commonly used are NRTs (nicotine replacement therapies). These work (you guessed it) by replacing the nicotine you’re no longer getting from smoking with products that help to wean you off the habit. You can get them in a variety of different forms (some you chew, some you stick to the skin).
Another way you can help wean yourself off smoking is E-cigarettes, which are an electronic devices that releases nicotine (but without many of the harmful chemicals in tobacco). These are essentially another form of NRT, so they shouldn’t be used alongside the therapies listed above.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
Have something specific you want to know about Stop smoking? Search our info below, or ask our experts a question if you can’t find what you’re looking for.
Estimating the number of quit attempts it takes to quit smoking successfully in a longitudinal cohort of smokers. BMJ Open, 6(6), p.e011045.
PURLs: “Cold turkey” works best for smoking cessation. The Journal of family practice, 66(3), pp.174–176.
Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. U.S.A. Cochrane Library
NHS stop smoking services help you quit - Quit smoking. NHS.
Exercise-based Smoking Cessation Interventions among Women. Women’s Health, 9(1), pp.69–84.
Registered with GMC (No. 4624794)
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Disclaimer: The information provided on this page is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions or concerns about your health, please talk to a doctor.
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