Quitting smoking helps at any age, no matter how long or how much you have smoked. It is one of the most important things a person can do for their health, and the single best way to protect family, friends and co-workers from secondhand smoke. Quitting earlier brings bigger gains, but even long-time, heavy smokers benefit.
From the 2020 Surgeon General's report on smoking cessation. CDC.
Overall
Quitting:
- improves health and quality of life;
- lowers the risk of early death and can add as much as 10 years to life expectancy;
- lowers the risk of heart and blood vessel disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer and poor reproductive outcomes;
- helps people already diagnosed with coronary heart disease or COPD;
- helps pregnant women and their babies;
- eases the financial burden of smoking on smokers, health care and society.
The heart and blood vessels
Quitting lowers the risk of illness and death from cardiovascular disease, reduces markers of inflammation and excess blood clotting, quickly improves "good" HDL cholesterol, and slows the hardening of the arteries. The risk of coronary heart disease falls sharply within 1–2 years and keeps falling more slowly after that; the risk of stroke approaches that of people who never smoked; the risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm falls further the longer you stay quit. It may also lower the risk of atrial fibrillation, sudden cardiac death, heart failure, blood clots in the veins and peripheral arterial disease. For people who already have coronary heart disease, quitting lowers the risk of early death, of death from heart disease, and of a first or repeat heart attack.
The lungs
Quitting lowers the risk of developing COPD and, for those who have it, slows its progress and the loss of lung function. It eases coughing, phlegm and wheezing, reduces infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia, and may improve lung function, symptoms and treatment results in people with asthma.
Cancer
Quitting smoking lowers the risk of 12 types of cancer. CDC.
Quitting lowers the risk of 12 cancers: acute myeloid leukemia, and cancers of the bladder, lung, cervix, colon and rectum, esophagus, kidney, liver, mouth and throat, pancreas, stomach and voice box. For cancer survivors it may improve the outlook and lower the risk of early death.
Pregnancy
The best time to quit is before trying to get pregnant, but quitting at any point in pregnancy helps mother and baby:
- before or early in pregnancy, it lowers the risk of a baby small for its gestational age, and may lower the risk of preterm birth;
- during pregnancy, it lowers the risk of low birth weight;
- early in pregnancy, it removes smoking's harm to the baby's growth.
What happens after the last cigarette
| After | What changes (compared with continuing to smoke) |
|---|---|
| Minutes | heart rate drops |
| 24 hours | nicotine in the blood falls to zero |
| Several days | carbon monoxide in the blood falls to a non-smoker's level |
| 1 to 12 months | coughing and shortness of breath ease |
| 1 to 2 years | risk of heart attack drops sharply |
| 3 to 6 years | the added risk of coronary heart disease is halved |
| 5 to 10 years | the added risk of mouth, throat and voice-box cancers is halved; stroke risk falls |
| 10 years | the added risk of lung cancer is halved (after 10 to 15 years); risk of bladder, esophagus and kidney cancers falls |
| 15 years | coronary heart disease risk is close to a non-smoker's |
| 20 years | risk of mouth, throat, voice-box and pancreatic cancers is close to a non-smoker's; the added risk of cervical cancer falls by about half |
Health care providers can share CDC's patient materials on quitting.
Sources
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Benefits of Quitting Smoking." https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/about/benefits-of-quitting.html
- The original's three stock photographs are not reproduced here.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.cdc.gov
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