Stop Smoking Help Blog

Werner Michael answers:

Yes, your lung capacity will improve but quiting both would improve it more. Also aerobic exercise will improve this even more. If you get regular aerobic activity (30 minutes 3-5 times a week), and quit smoking cigarettes, you should be able to continue smoking marijauna while greatly reducing harm to your lungs.

Also, the addictive qualities of marijauna are much less than cigarettes and more mental than physical, so you should be able to recognize your own body’s responses and cut back as much as you need to to achieve the desired effects of your lungs. With cigarettes you are physically addicted and the ability to control the habit is much less.

Most people will inhale much more smoke on a consistant basis with cigarettes than with marijauna. Unless your smoking the equivalence of 20 joints a day or something. Then it would comparable to a pack of cigarettes a day, but I assume your not. That would get expensive.

Also a vaporizor would enable you to use marijauna without getting the smoke with it, as well as an electronic cigarette for nicotine.

Http://www.gotvape.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-cigarette

http://www.smokingeverywhere.com/

Werner Michael answers:

Depends on how much u smoke.. I smoke every day and feel fine i am not lazy nor eat all day… I am a productive smoker. The only benefit i see is that u will be able to pass a drug test and no more red eyes

Werner Michael answers:

20 Minutes After Quitting
Your heart rate drops.

12 hours After Quitting
Carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

2 Weeks to 3 Months After Quitting
Your heart attack risk begins to drop.
Your lung function begins to improve.

1 to 9 Months After Quitting
Your Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.

1 Year After Quitting
Your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.

5 Years After Quitting
Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker’s

10 Years After Quitting
Your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker’s.
Your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas decreases.

15 Years After Quitting
Your risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker’s.

Werner Michael answers:

I think this is what you were thinking of.

Hey, besides all these, your teeth will look better once you get them bleached, your breath will smell nicer, your clothes won’t reek, you’ll be about $500 a month richer… That’s $6K/yr. After 40 years you smoked away a pretty nice house in the ‘burbs… You’ll wonder what the heck took you so long. Good for you!

Time Since Quitting – Health Benefit

20 minutes – Your heart rate drops.
12 hours – The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
2 weeks – 3 months – Circulation improves and lung function increases.
1 – 9 months – Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
1 year – The excess risk of heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.
5 – 15 years – The risk of stroke is as low as a nonsmoker’s.
10 years – The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker’s.
15 years – The risk of heart disease is as low as a nonsmoker’s.

Werner Michael answers:

Quitting smoking is not easy due to the very powerful drug nicotine. Because smokers become addicted to nicotine they also inhale harmful tobacco tar which contains around 120 different poisons and 1200 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic. Imagine all those on your tongue! However here’s how to do it and it works because I did it.

First of all you’ve got to want to quit, and genuinely, because if you don’t you’ll backslide at the first chance you get. Don’t forget that when you give up just having the odd one makes you a smoker again.

Right then, here we go.

Pick a date that you want to stop. Make sure it’s not a day when you would normally smoke heavier such as Saturday night in the bar. Don’t ‘stock up’ by smoking heavier than you would up to Q-Day (Quitting Day). If you can cut down a bit. The craving is caused by the nicotine levels in your body dropping thus creating a ‘need’ to replace them. On Q-Day don’t carry anything connected with smoking, no cigarettes or matches or lighter. Do have a supply of mints or sweets to suck when you get a craving. Tell friends and family that ‘You Don’t Smoke’ NOT that ‘You’re Giving Up’ otherwise they’ll offer you one saying ‘Just one won’t hurt’. If they do tell them that it will and if they give you one you’ll break it up. If they insist, do that, they won’t offer again.

On the first day you’ll get cravings, but try to think of something else and suck a mint. DO NOT substitute food for cigarettes. Eat normally. Remember that you have ‘Chosen’ not to smoke. Each time a craving comes you have a choice to smoke or not to. Choose not to.

Within the first three days your body will start to reject the toxins and poisons you’ve been filling it with and you’ll feel worse and probably have a bad taste in your mouth. Don’t worry this is normal. After a week this will pass. You’ll start to taste your food again, smell things better, breathe better and feel better. You may cough up some phlegm. Do not worry. This is your lungs getting rid of some of the tar. After two weeks it becomes more normal not to smoke. Eventually you will notice how badly other smokers smell and how loathsome tobacco smoke is. You will feel fitter and better in everyway.

Don’t forget to remember that you are a non-smoker now. It was your choice. If you want to see some tangible results each morning put the amount of money you would have spent on cigarettes that day in a jar. In England they cost around £4.50 for twenty so a twenty a day smoker will spend around £135.00 a month on this dirty habit. In exchange they will get poor health, die younger, be poorer in the pocket, be offensive to others and impair their senses besides being an un-neccesary drain on the Health Service. If I asked you before you smoked to pay that in exchange for those things, would you buy them?

Think of why you smoked in the first place. Remember that starting smoking is not pleasant. It makes you sick. Was it peer pressure? Did you think it made you look ‘cool’ or ‘grown-up’ or ‘tough’? Are those things still relevant. Think about all the non-smokers who are ‘cool’ They’re certainly more so than smokers.

Finally I will not criticise you for being a smoker, I was one myself once but let me close by letting you into a little secret. Before I retired one of my jobs was to sell life insurance and pensions to my customers. One of the questions on the application form was ‘Do you smoke?’ and ‘How many cigarettes a day do you smoke?’ Why do you think that insurance companies ask you that? I’ll tell you. It is proven fact, not conjecture, fact, that each cigarette you smoke knocks between 5 and 6 minutes off your life expectancy. I worked on 6 so that for every ten a day you smoke you lose an hour. Every 24 days you lose a day. Every 24 years you lose a year. If you start smoking at age 18 and do 20 a day then by the age of 66 you have lost 4 years life expectancy. If I were to ask you at 66 ‘Do you want to live until you are 70 or die today?’ what would your answer be? You see, with life policies we had to pay out sooner to smokers as they died sooner so the premiums were loaded. If you have life insurance when you have given up for one year tell them and they should reduce your premiums. If you lie, of course, they’ll know from the post mortem and medical history that you have and may reduce the payment for the policy.

I hope I have been of help. Good luck with giving up. I quit on February 14th 1975 and haven’t smoked one since. I was on 15-20 a day.

Werner Michael answers:

Your clothes, house, car and mouth don’t stink any more.
You are able to climb satairs without being out of breath.
You can sleep better at night.
You are less susceptible to colds and flu.
Your overall helath imporoves significantly.

I can see that you are building up your resolve to stop. Soon, you will be ready.

Quitting smoking is a great opportunity to learn about ourselves, as you have already observed.
Congratulate yourself on having the desire to stop – then you are over the worst, but still need to maintain your resolve. It’s just so easy to start thinking that just one won’t hurt, but it does. Just one achieves nothing except feeling the need for another. Whatever you do, don’t have just one.
Here’s a few home-brewed tips that might be useful.
It’s not just nicotine addiction – there are 50+ chemicals in cigarettes. Also the main problem is habit.
We have been used to having body sensations which we translate as ‘my body needs something’, which we have attempted to satisfy by having a cigarette.
When we try to stop smoking, we still get these ‘my body needs something’ sensations, and we still feel that we want a cigarette. We have to train our body to be more selective. When we feel we need something, we have to work out what it is that we actually need.
A glass of water is an excellent substitute if nothing else comes to mind, as it helps with the clearance of the toxic substances in our body. Another good substitute is a bag of salted peanuts, used in combination with the water.
Another thing to do is to find an activity which occupies the mind or body. Go swimming – nobody wants to smoke while they are swimming. Slowly, as our body adjusts and translates the ‘want something’ feelings into something other than cigarettes, then the feelings begin to go away. We know its not a cigarette that the body really needs, because as soon as we’ve had one we still have the feeling, and want another!
We will have a few bouts of feeling or even being short tempered. We must try to bite our lip, and control; ourselves. Recognise the short temper as being the removal of toxins which are trying to find a way out. They went in through the mouth, and they try to get out that way to. We must learn to keep our mouth closed, and force the toxins out the other way.

After we have stopped for a while we will begin to feel that just one wont to any harm.
All that leads to is a desire for just another one. We must guard very strongly against the desire to have just one.