Stop Smoking Timeline
March 16th, 2009. Published under Personal Development. No Comments.
When you quit smoking, your body instantly senses not just the adverse repercussions of quitting smoking but the desirable outcome as well. Within hours of ceasing to smoke, your body begins a process of healing and regeneration that can last for years and will in due course improve your health and wellbeing.
Of course, once you decide to quit smoking, you do not essentially view the consequent health benefits as concrete concepts, but rather as elusive notions that may occur at some point in your distant future. The solution is to get acquainted with what is known as “quit smoking timeline”, which may help you determine and monitor your own healing process. You might be amazed to find out that some of these benefits can occur just a few hours after quitting smoking.
First Couple of Hours
In the first couple of hours after you stop smoking, your heart rate and blood pressure will almost immediately drop to normal or healthy levels. Furthermore, your circulation noticeably improves, and you may perceive a warm feeling in your feet & hands.
8 Hours
Carbon monoxide (a.k.a. CO) is among the toxic components that can be found in cigarettes. Hence, smokers have dangerous quantities of carbon monoxide in their serum or blood. However, once you give up smoking, the quantity of carbon monoxide in your blood starts to fall in just eight hours. As your blood’s carbon monoxide falls, the quantity of oxygen in your blood rises to optimal levels.
24 Hours After
At 24 hours after quitting, your risk factor for heart attack decreases.
Within Forty Eight Hours
At forty eight hours in the stop smoking timeline, you begin to struggle with the most difficult effects of withdrawal. Some sort of nervous regeneration happens, first diminishing your taste and olfactory senses, but later improving them henceforth.
Two to Three Weeks
Within 2 to 3 weeks after ceasing to smoke, your body’s circulation will likely be substantially improved. You will have the faculty to take up exercises and physical activities without any trouble. Hiking or walking long distances will not be a problem anymore. Your lung’s function will also improve greatly, with coughing and phlegm reduced.
Next 1-9 Months
Healing and regeneration of your lungs takes place in the 1st to 9th month of the smoking cessation timeline. The tiny cilia inside your lungs begin to develop and function again. You will experience improvements in your breathing, and your sinuses will return to normal once more. As a result, you will feel less tired and more alert.
After 1 Year
After a year, your risk heart attack or cardiac disease is lowered by 50% compared to when you were still a smoker.
Long Term
For the long term, the following are some factors to deliberate: After 5 to 15 years, you have the same potential for gettinga stroke as as an individual who has never smoked. Within 10 years, you have a decreased potential for experiencing lung cancer or different cancers (such as throat, pancreas, mouth, bladder, esophagus, kidneys, and others) that generally affect long-term smokers. In fifteen (15) years, your potential for contracting a heart condition (coronary disease or heart attack) is reduced to the level of a person who has never smoked.
With this stop smoking timeline to guide you, you can more efficiently form a clear vision of your objectives and consequently make the choice to fight your smoking addiction easier for you.