Advantages of Quitting Smoking

Many smokers consider the main advantages of quitting smoking to be the health benefits to be gained but there are many other benefits to giving up as we can see in the table below.

Benefits of Giving Up Smoking
Benefit Advantages
Confidence
  • Stopping smoking is a challenge. Once you have quit, you will know you can succeed at difficult taks and take more control of your life. Quitting helps you believe in yourself.
Fitness
  • Smoking makes it harder to exercise and reduces the benefits to your body. Smokers have more coughs and colds than non-smokers and take longer to feel well again.
Money
  • In a way, giving up smoking is like getting a pay rise, as much as £1500 a year if you smoke 20 cigarettes a day.
Appearance
  • Skin starved of oxygen by smoking becomes dry and grey. Wrinkles around the eyes and mouth develop much earlier and the tar stains your teeth and fingers.
Fertility
  • Men who smoke may suffer impotence due to damage to the blood vessels in the penis. Sperm quality and density can also be affected by smoking. Smokers may produce less sperm and their sperm may have more abnormalities.
  • Women who smoke take longer to conceive and are more likely to have a miscarriage.
Childbirth
  • Babies born to mothers who smoked in pregnancy are more likely to be premature, stillborn or die shortly after birth. A baby exposed to tobacco smoke has a higher risk of dying from cot death.
Children
  • Children whose parents smoke are more likely to get pneumonia and bronchitis in their first year of life, to suffer from more frequent and more severe asthma attacks and to become regular smokers themselves.
Table 1 - Benefits of Giving Up Smoking

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