Just 20 minutes after you smoke your last cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse return to normal. After only 24 hours your potential for heat attack decreases. Within months of quitting your circulation improves, walking becomes easier, lung function increases and coughing, sinus congestion, fatigue and shortness of breath decrease. At one year, your risk of developing coronary heart disease is cut in half. Fifteen years after quitting, your risk of coronary heart disease and premature death from disease is the same as a nonsmoker's.
Smokers typically make two or three attempts before they achieve long-term smoking cessation.
The good news is that half of all adult smokers have successfully quit, and you can too. If someone joins our smoking cessation program because they are tired of being nagged by their family, they usually won't quit for long because they aren't ready to commit to quitting. Becoming better informed about how tobacco affects your body and mind is an important first step. The internet has many sites dedicated to smoking and tobacco use cessation, which include helpful information and offer the added benefit of chat rooms and posting boards that can act as support groups. The smoking cessation program provides individuals with the tools to assess and understand their smoking behavior, their readiness to quit, their level of nicotine addiction, whether a smoking cessation aid such as the patch should be used and the benefits of being a non-smoker.