Kicking the Habit: Reasons to Quit Smoking

Regardless of why you started smoking, there are an infinite number of reasons why you should quit. Most people who are considering quitting smoking tend to be worried about developing any number of the widely known, serious health complications it causes, including:

• emphysema
• heart attack
• heart disease
• hypertension
• lung, mouth and/or throat cancer
• stroke.

Along with these are a number of other health, financial and personal reasons that you should start taking measures to quit smoking today.

Quit Smoking to Improve Your Health

As previously mentioned, smoking causes a number of potentially fatal, permanent health problems. However, it is also responsible for causing other serious, but lesser known health complications, such as:

• Alzheimer's disease: Smokers are five times more likely than non-smokers to suffer from this disease that causes memory loss and rapid mental decline.
• Blindness: Macular degeneration, a condition that eventually causes blindness, is four times more likely to develop in smokers, as opposed to non-smokers.
• Breast cancer: Women who smoke are about three times as likely to develop breast cancer than their non-smoking counterparts.
• Impotence: Male smokers are at a higher risk of suffering from erectile dysfunction.
• Lupus: Smoking slightly but significantly increases people's risk of developing lupus, a debilitating autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own tissues.
• Rheumatoid arthritis: Studies have proven that smokers are up to 16 times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic condition marked by joint stiffness, pain and weakness.

Heartburn, thyroid disease and depression are other health conditions that you can prevent or minimize by quitting smoking.

Financial Reasons to Quit Smoking

In addition to the number of serious health complications associated with smoking, this bad habit is also costly financially. While the cost of cigarettes varies from brand to brand, the average a pack of cigarettes costs about $5 (including tax). Consult the table below to see approximately how much you spend on cigarettes each week, month and year.

Clearly, over the span of a year, smokers can waste hundreds to thousands of dollars on tobacco products that are detrimental to their health. As you are considering quitting smoking, keep in mind that breaking your habit will free up a lot of money, which you can use to:

• buy something nice for yourself or a loved one
• go on a mini vacation
• increase your savings or retirement fund.

Personal Reasons to Quit Smoking

As if the health and financial reasons aren't motivating enough, here are some other, more personal reasons that may convince you to make an effort to stop smoking:

• Avoid being a smoking "role model" that can influence your kids to start smoking.
• Prevent premature wrinkles.
• Prevent your teeth from early yellowing.
• Stop exposing your loved ones to secondhand smoke.

Tips for Quitting Smoking

If you have decided that you are ready to stop smoking, here are some tips that can get you started:

• Identify and avoid your triggers, namely the situations, people or emotions that make you want to pick up a cigarette.
• Consider using a nicotine supplement product (such as the patch) that can give you a nicotine fix while you wean your body off of the drug.
• Slowly decrease the number of cigarettes you smoke each day until you wean yourself off them.
• Tell your family and friends that you are quitting so that you have support, as well as people who will hold you accountable.

Resources

Laino, Charlene (n.d.). 10 Overlooked Reasons to Quit Smoking. Retrieved January 3, 2008 from the WebMD Website: http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/features/10-overlooked-reasons-to-quit-smoking.