Reasons to quit smoking

Smoking kills

• One in two lifetime smokers will die from smoking.

• Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, asthma and emphysema.

Your smoking affects others too

• Smoking around others can affect their health too.

• For non-smokers, other people’s smoke can cause lung cancer and heart disease. It

can also irritate the nose, eyes and throat and lead to chronic coughing, phlegm production,

shortness of breath and chest illness.

• Other people's smoke also increases the incidence of asthma attacks, especially in

children.

Smoking may make it harder for you to have a family

• Men who smoke may suffer impotence and smoking can also affect sperm quality.

• Women who smoke take longer to fall pregnant and are more likely to miscarry.

• Mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have low birthweight babies,

and to give birth to babies who are premature, stillborn, or die shortly after birth.

Quitting sets a good example for your family

• It shows you care about your health and the health of your family.

• If you quit, your fitness will improve and you have a better chance of keeping up with

your kids!

• And the money you used to spend on cigarettes will be there to spend on yourself

and your family.

Quit and you’ll feel some of the benefits straight away

• After 24 hours, most carbon monoxide from smoking is out of your system. Lungs

work better and you can do more before running short of breath.

• After two days, senses of taste and smell sharpen. Breath, hair, fingers and teeth

are cleaner.

• Within a month of quitting, your blood pressure should return to its normal level.

• Within two months, blood flow to hands and feet improves, the toes and fingers stay

warm and you will have more energy.

• After about three months, men and women become more fertile. The lungs may

have regained the capacity to clean themselves properly.

Quit to live longer

• Quitting smoking reduces the risk of lung cancer, other cancers, heart attack, stroke,

and chronic lung disease.

• Smokers who quit live longer than those who quit later in life. For example, a person

who stops smoking before age 50 has half the risk of dying in the next 15 years compared

with continuing smokers.

• On average, smoking reduces your life span by over 10 years.

• At about three months, most quitters have become established non smokers.

Quitting is not always easy…

• Every year about 1.7 million Australian smokers try to quit and 180,000 succeed permanently.

• One of the things that make it hard to quit is that smokers are addicted to the nicotine

in cigarettes. There are medical products available to help you stop smoking and to

deal with the symptoms of withdrawal.

• Each time you stop smoking you learn more about quitting and it is never too late to

try again.