It should go without saying that quitting smoking has immense benefits for improving your overall health. Whether you have been smoking for 20 days or 20 years, as soon as you can break your smoking habit, your life expectancy will lengthen and your health will improve. No matter what age you are now or how long you’ve been smoking, the health benefits of quitting smoking increase every day that you do not smoke.

In this article we will discuss the act of quitting smoking, health benefits and other immediate improvements that come with it such as:

• Non-Life-Threatening Conditions: Smoking can cause serious issues with fertility as well as bone and optical health.

• Life-Threatening Conditions: There are many serious conditions that can be minimized by quitting smoking.

• The Immediate Improvement of Your Outward Appearance: There will be substantial positive changes to your appearance as soon as you quit smoking.

• Smoking By the Numbers: Statistics on quitting smoking.

• Clinical Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy: We speak with qualified clinical hypnotist, Joseph R. Giove, who talks about how hypnotherapy has helped thousands successfully quit smoking.

Non-Life-Threatening Conditions

There are numerous health risks that go along with smoking. The conditions that are most talked about are the more serious problems related to smoking, such as terminal cancers. However, there are also many, many non-life-threatening conditions that can be caused or accelerated due to smoking. The following are just some of the health problems that can occur from smoking:

• Impotence and fertility problems
• Cataracts and optic neuropathy
• Tooth loss and gum disease
• Osteoporosis

While these conditions are not life-threatening, contracting any or all of these can become a major problem in your life and could worsen over time, becoming serious health issues. These conditions, while not immediately life-threatening, can lead to a shorter lifespan and a more distressing lifestyle with hefty medical bills. Quitting smoking can drastically reduce your chances of contracting or exacerbating these conditions.

Life-Threatening Conditions

Aside from the aforementioned ‘side-effects’ that can develop from smoking, there are far more serious conditions that you can contract. Smoking is extremely dangerous to a person’s health. The previously listed non-life-threatening effects pale in comparison to what can happen to the vital organs of the human body. The heart, lungs, and other internal organs all are damaged with every cigarette that is smoked. Here are some of the conditions that can affect both quality and length of life:

• Most Cancers
• Heart Disease
• Peripheral Vascular Disease
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
• Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema

You will notice that ‘cancers’ is pluralized. Smoking causes cancer in the lungs, mouth, throat, esophagus, larynx, bladder, kidney, pancreas, stomach, liver, colon, cervix, and rectum. It can also cause acute myeloid leukemia, which affects the blood. In addition to heart disease and COPD, smoking greatly increases your chances of a stroke or aortic aneurysm, which is a balloon-like bulge in an artery near your heart.

Quitting smoking has immense benefits to your overall health. Chemicals and toxins will cease building up in your heart, lungs, stomach, and other vital organs, allowing you to breathe easier, exercise longer, and eat healthier. By quitting smoking you are greatly improving your quality of life, health, appearance, and longevity.

The Immediate Improvement of Your Outward Appearance

As we can see, quitting smoking will greatly improve your overall health. These improvements happen not only internally (heart, lungs, etc.), but outwardly as well. There are several immediate improvements to a person’s physical features, which continue to improve the longer they go without smoking. Some of these items are:

• Improvements around the mouth and teeth
• Sense of smell and taste return
• Everyday activities become less taxing

As soon you quit smoking, even only after a few days, your physical features will begin return to normal. Smoking causes the teeth, fingertips and fingernails to turn to a yellow-brownish color, but soon after you quit smoking your teeth will be white again and your fingers will return to their normal color. Along with staining, smoking causes bad breath, which will also subside the longer you refrain from smoking.

Most smokers are imperceptive to their own bad breath because they have a diminished sense of taste and smell. These senses gradually begin to regenerate when someone quits smoking. They often find that food tastes better and everything smells better than they can even remember.

Simple activities like exercising, walking or even doing simple chores will be much easier after quitting smoking. Everyday things that would normally have smokers out of breath can now be completed with ease. People who have been smoking for a long time have had to go outside for a cigarette break since most buildings and facilities are now smoke-free. After quitting smoking, people will no longer have to go outside every hour.

Smoking by the Numbers

These are obviously very serious and life-threatening conditions that smokers risk contracting at a much, much higher rate than non-smokers. Not only will these conditions drastically reduce your life expectancy, Here are some of the statistics about quitting smoking:

• If you quit smoking before the age 35, your life expectancy will return to that of a non-smoker
• If you quit smoking before age 50, your risk of acquiring cancer or disease decreases by 50%.

Every day that you continue to smoke, your risk of getting one or more of these cancers or diseases increases dramatically.

Clinical Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy

Quitting smoking is extremely beneficial to a person’s health. There are physical factors that can be reversed, such as yellow teeth; and then there are the internal factors that may not be so reversible, but can certainly be lessened by eliminating cigarettes. Heart disease, cancer and respiratory issues are just some of the harrowing risks that accompany a smoking habit.

Many people who have been smoking for some time want to quit. If you are a smoker you have many reasons not to quit, but you only need one reason to stop smoking. Perhaps you have started to see some of these symptoms; maybe it is for a loved one. No matter what the reasons are, quitting smoking can be very difficult. We spoke with Joseph R. Giove is a licensed Clinical Hypnosis specialist, who said that hypnotherapy is one of the easiest and most effective methods available to help quit smoking. In his 25 years of experience in the smoking cessation industry, he has seen first-hand how effective this treatment has been with his patients, and the low recidivism rate. If you are thinking about leaving cigarettes behind, it is time to consider hypnotherapy.