So what happens when you stop smoking cigarettes? One of the first things that happens is that your body starts to slowly cry out for more nicotine. It is used to getting a fairly regular injection of fresh nicotine, about every hour, so after you go past that point your body will let you know about it. Go too far past that point and your body will really get cranky with you and start letting you know for real that it is going into serious withdrawal.
And of course all sorts of health benefits start kicking in right away. Your heart rate returns to normal very quickly, within a matter of hours, because smoking a single cigarette will cause it to jump by approximately ten beats per minute. In other words, smoking makes your heart race a little, and after you quit, it returns to normal fairly fast.
You know those little hairs that line your throat and help to move the food along, called cilia? Well, smoking kills those things completely. When you quit smoking, the start to grow back a few days later. Normally, if you are a smoker, the smoke just kills them again and prevents them from ever growing.
And of course, you know how, as a smoker, you always seem to be out of breath? Like if you are walking a long way through the city, or you have to walk up a steep hill, and you get to the top and suddenly you realize that you are panting quite a bit? Well, that goes away too after you quit smoking, usually after only a month or two. In other words, you “get your wind back.” The fancy term is “lung function returns to normal.”
Of course, the benefits of quitting go beyond your health systems. For example, most people start accumulating extra savings the moment that they quit smoking, usually to the tune of around 100 bucks per month. This all depends on how much they spend on cigarettes of course. An extra $100 per month can make a real difference these days.
And here is another shocker that I can never pass up: those who smoke a little over a pack a day, they gain an entire month of extra time each year from quitting smoking. Most people are like “what?” What this means is that the average smoker spends an entire month out of each year actually puffing away on the cigarettes themselves. That is a lot of extra time you will get back!
