What is the quitting smoking timeline? What happens after you quit smoking and how fast does your body start to heal from the damage that was caused from smoking?
Within a few minutes to a few hours, your heart rate will straighten out, because smoking a single cigarette will cause your pulse to increase by up to 10 beats per minute.
After just a single day of not smoking, your risk of heart attack is already decreasing.
Within just 2 days, you can start to taste and smell things much better than when you were smoking. Food will start tasting much better, and you will eat more of it.
Within just a few weeks to a few months, your ability to exercise effectively returns. The shortness of breath that came from smoking will be gone. This is amazing and it happens very quickly!
After a full year, your risk of heart attack and heart disease drop down to about half that of a non smoker. You still have a ways to go but you are in much better shape at this point.
After 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years, your risk of lung cancer and death from smoking starts to significantly drop and it actually gets back to the level of a nonsmoker when you get to the 15 year mark.
So what does this mean for you? Well, if you are a smoker, then you should seriously think about quitting, because you can enjoy all of these health benefits and a lot more if you quit today. The days will add up quickly and your health returns very fast.
One thing that is not on this quit smoking timeline is the idea of money or time spent smoking. The average smoker will save around $1,500 dollars every single year after they quit smoking. This is actually only a minor cost compared to the savings in medical costs that they will experience as well if they quit now. Continue to smoke, and your total expenses for something like cancer or heart disease can total several hundred thousand dollars over your whole lifetime.
The other major factor is the time spent smoking cigarettes. How much time do you spend actually puffing on cigarettes? Most smokers who smoke a pack a day or more spend almost a full month out of each year actually smoking cigarettes. This is an atrocious figure and if you can reclaim your health from quitting smoking then you will also reclaim this lost time and be happier and more productive for it.
