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The Benefits of Quitting Smoking 

What happens to your body when you quit smoking 

If you smoke, your body is constantly working to try and repair the damage done by regularly inhaling more than 4000 toxic chemicals. Every hour, day, week, month and year that you go without smoking, your health will improve. You will feel immediate benefits when you quit as your body starts to repair itself. Quitting at any age is beneficial and does not only increase life expectancy, it also improves quality of life.

After 8 hours: 
* Nicotine will start to leave your body. 
* Your heart rate and blood pressure will begin to return to normal. 
* The level of oxygen in your blood will start to increase. 

After 12 hours: 
* There will be almost no nicotine remaining in your body. 

After 24 hours: 
* The level of carbon monoxide in your blood will have dropped dramatically. 

After 3 to 5 days: 
* Your sense of taste and smell will improve. 
* You will feel and sleep better and your breath, clothes and hair will smell fresher. 

After 1 month: 
* Your immune system will begin to show signs of recovery. 
* You will experience less shortness of breath and be able to exercise more easily than before. 

After 2 months: 
* Your lungs will no longer be producing the extra phlegm caused by smoking. 
* Your blood pressure level will return to normal. 
* Your blood circulation will improve and blood will flow more easily to your hands and feet. 

After 3 months: 
* The cilia in your lungs will have recovered to efficiently clean your lungs and airways.

After 1 year: 
* Your risk of dying from coronary heart disease will be half that of a continuing smoker. 

After 5 years:
* Your risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and oesophagus will be half that of a continuing smoker. 

After 10 years:
* Your risk of lung cancer will be less than half that of a continuing smoker.

After 15 years: 
* Your risk of coronary heart disease and stroke will be almost the same as that of a person who has never smoked.

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It's never too late ~ a poem by Aniket Anand

Damp breeze amongst shimmering lights,
Quite heavy lay the rainy night,
Incessant coughs, her voice too gruff,
Yet rose the white smoke puff.

Minutes ago the rain had ceased,
Hither-thither lay chilling mist,
She had found a bench and lighted one,
Remorseful for having done.

Her life was a happy and pleasant one,
A carefree bird with hunters none,
Yet she smoked, the free sweet lark,
Two years ago in the same old park.

As days rushed past and months went by,
She missed her smile, her stare wry,
The lark quit her chirp and song and play,
She couldn't sleep at night and smoked all day.

Numerous alikes she found on the way,
But they seemed happy, cheerful and gay,
She envied their joy and wept lighting it,
A monstrous effort - she was trying to quit.

She liked it then, as all other folks,
Looked down upon the world as a roosting hawk,
She relished diving in the smoky well,
Yes, it helped to delve in her self.

Now a deplorable her, yearning to quit,
She threw them all and yelped seeing it,
She tried all day with her last bit,
But as night fell, she bought one and lit.

And so it happened, day after day,
"I pity her," you could hear them say,
She restrained for a while but couldn't for long,
She would end up smoking every morn.

Then there was a day she managed without,
Enthralled to the spirit, she would scream and shout,
She said aloud, "I'd no more be sick,"
Yet the next setting sun lit the stick.

There were days again she managed without,
"She'll smoke again," you could hear them doubt,
But she fought and stretched it to a week,
Spirited again to give up the wick.

Steadily she tread the path so wild,
Determined to quit before she died,
Months now she could stand without lighting it,
Eventually, one gracious day, she managed to quit.

She was strolling past the same old park,
She found a faint light amidst the dark,
A young boy smoking, two packets nearby lay,
"It's never late to quit," she said and went away.

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Out Like a Light-By Colleen Braganza, HT Sunday Magazine, February 17, 2008

Nicotine is as addictive as drugs like cocaine and heroin. No wonder that it takes a little more than will power to kick smoking for good. You know it’s charring your lungs, your breath smells foul, your skin feels like leather, you feel exhausted all the time and you realise you stopped enjoying it a long time ago. So, you decide to stub out your last cigarette and swear no more, never more. You are smoke free for a day, for two, for a month. The pull of cigarette smoke beckons you everywhere – over drinks in pubs, in restaurants, while meeting friends, outside office. You resist. You feel good about it. But one day, you are vulnerable. You crave that fix. Just one, you reason with yourself. You succumb. You are a smoker again. Many smokers will be familiar with this story. After all, it’s the story of their lives. This is not to say that people don’t succeed. But this piece is for those who fail.

BODY & MIND

“Seventy per cent of smokers want to quit the habit but cannot because nicotine is as addictive as drugs like cocaine and heroin,” says tobacco cessation expert Dr Sajeela Maini, a consultant with Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. Dr Maini, who has helped scores kick the butt, says individuals often fail to quit smoking because it is a habit attached to one’s lifestyle. “Smokers crave a smoke when they are happy or sad, while sipping tea / coffee, before or after work, before and after meals or while meeting friends; the list is endless.” Smokers need to break that lifestyle link or they will fail to quit, she says. The doctor adds that smoking is an addiction of the mind and body, thus any attempt to quit should address both the physiological and psychological factors. Often, the barriers to quitting successfully are more psychological than physiological. This is because the physiological craving for a cigarette just lasts 72 hours. It’s the psychological craving that is more difficult to overcome. Twenty-five-year-old copywriter Arpan Sengupta would agree. Spooked after a close relative died due to oral cancer, Sengupta quit smoking five years ago, but his attempt lasted four ‘difficult’ months. He simply broke one day. “I was in college and had to give in some work. The pressure was really on. So one day I just lit a cigarette and said ‘this is so much better’. It is really more of a psychological than physiological thing,” he adds.

KICK THE BUTT

But you can kick the habit for good. “The best way is to go cold turkey. That is, quit abruptly,” says Dr Maini, who doesn’t believe that anyone can quit smoking successfully by reducing the number of cigarettes gradually. “You are never a reduced smoker. You are either a smoker or not.” At the tobacco cessation clinic at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, smokers undergo a scientific assessment and diagnosis and are prepared to quit smoking in 7-8 sittings spread over two weeks. The programme is fashioned according to individual needs and can include Nicotine Replacement Therapy if required. The sittings address two parameters: making a person quit and teaching him / her to remain smoke free.

So how do you do that?

You can start by identifying your triggers. What is it that prompts you to smoke? An ashtray, a cigarette, a person smoking, a meal or a movie or a cup of coffee?

When you identify your triggers, you are in a better position to deal with them. “When the craving strikes you need to defer that impulse. Do something else; drink a glass of water or juice or eat an orange. Whenever you eat something, the urge to smoke will go. Thus, the impulse dies,” says Dr Maini, who says the tobacco cessation programme at the Ganga Ram hospital has a 70-80 per cent success rate.

ONE SMOKE SYNDROME

As Mark Twain found out, quitting smoking is easy. But the real challenge lies in staying clean for good. After all, it just takes one cigarette for a relapse. “A relapse is never planned. It starts with an impulse. You fool yourself saying ‘one cigarette will not do any harm.’ No one realises the ‘one cigarette’ syndrome is very dangerous,” warns Dr Maini. That’s how 33-year-old financial advisor Husain succumbed. A smoker for 12 years now, Husain decided to quit last year. “I didn’t smoke for three months. After initial discomfort, I really enjoyed being smoke free. Then while hanging out with a couple of old friends, one of whom was a chain smoker, I took a drag on the spur of the moment,” says Husain, regretfully. And that was the end of his smoke free experiment. “I really want to punch that friend,” he laughs. To prevent relapses from happening, Dr Maini has a few commandments that her patients must follow. “I tell them that they must say no to shared or offered cigarettes. They must not take even a single puff.”

HYPNOSIS

Quitting smoking with the help of hypnotherapy is an option for smokers too.

Mumbai-based hypnotherapist Dr Neeta Yuvraj, who has conceived of a unique smoking cessation programme using hypnosis, says her success rate is 99.9 per cent among willing candidates. That is, smokers who want to quit of their own accord. “People who approach us to please their parents or girl / boyfriends, usually fail.” Dr Yuvraj explains how hypnotherapy works. “We all have positive and negative associations stored in our mind. Most of us have positive associations with smoking, say memories of a girlfriend, thrill of rebellion or power and a feeling of being wanted. We take smokers back to the first time they smoked and ask them to remember how they felt. Some say, ‘strong like my father’, others say, ‘we finally felt complete’. We then reprogramme the sub-conscious mind to disassociate from these positive feelings and replace them with neutral feelings.” Dr Yuvraj adds that smoking is the tip of a deeper malaise. “Smokers don’t realise it, but they smoke because of a deep void in their lives. It could be a need for love, recognition, spiritual experience or comfort. We help identify that void under hypnosis and help smokers emotionally come to terms with it.” Once that void is dealt with, smokers don’t feel the need to smoke any more. They are effectively ‘cured’.

cbraganza@hindustantimes.com

INSTANT RECOVERY MODE

Did you know that your body goes into recovery mode the moment you quit smoking? “The body is very good to us. We abuse it, but it recovers quickly when we stop,” says Dr Maini. For one, the carbon monoxide (CO) levels in your system drop drastically. Dr Maini tests her clients for CO levels every day. “They can actually see the drop. It’s very motivating.” Besides that, Dr Maini says, “you feel energetic almost immediately. Food tastes better, you feel healthier, you are not tired all the time, your skin feels better and your smoker’s cough goes.” Even hardcore smokers who quit, however temporarily, admit they feel better immediately. Says Husain of his brief interlude in a smoke free world: “I felt good, fresh. I didn’t feel tired at the end of the day. Mentally I was averse to people who smoked. When I met other smokers I even used to think ‘God, I used to smell like this’!”

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