Whether you are a smoker or not, you're going to learn the shocking truth about smoking. Cigarette smoking kills 307,000 people in North America each year. The best known and among the most deadly outcomes comes from cancer and emphysema.



Pipe and cigar smoking don't have the lung consequences that cigarette smoking does, but can lead to cancer of the lips, tongue and esophagus. Any form of Nicotine can have an effect on your blood vessels and will increase your chance of having a heart attack.

On the bright side, it's never too late to stop. The development of emphysema is stopped for many people when they stop smoking, although this condition doesn't actually reverse. Most people who quit smoking will enjoy major health benefits the rest of their lives.

Here are some excellent tips to help you stop smoking:

Decide firmly that you really want to do it. You need to believe that you can. Set a date on which you will stop smoking. Announce this date to your friends. When the day comes, just stop and don't look back.

You can expect that the physical addiction to nicotine may make you nervous and irritable. After you get over being nervous and irritable there's no further physical addiction. You still have to look out for the psychological craving that sometimes lasts a very long time.

Try to reward yourself every week or so by buying something nice with what would have been using for cigarette money.

Combine your stop-smoking program with an increase in your exercise program. The two changes fit together naturally. Exercise will take your mind off the smoking change, and it will decrease the tendency to gain weight in the early weeks after you stop smoking; this weight gain is the only negative consequence of stopping smoking.

To sum all this up, the immediate rewards of not smoking include better tasting food, happier friends, less cough, better stamina, more money, fewer holes in your clothes, and membership in a larger world. And to top that off, if you have children, you become a better role model for them.