Stopping smoking isn’t easy, but the benefits are huge. You can add years to your life, and reduce your chances of disease as you get older.
We can help you find a way to quit smoking for good. Talk to us to get tailored recommendations, and order your stop smoking treatment online.
The first thing you need to quit smoking is the will to become a non-smoker. The second is to get advice on how best to do that. There’s no one size fits all approach for quitting smoking, but there are some tried and trusted methods that we can help you with. Prescription treatments like Champix and Zyban have shown to be effective at helping many people to quit.
There are lots of ways, so it’s a matter of finding the right one for you. Many statistics show that you’re more likely to quit with the help of stop smoking aids and treatments, but with so many available, finding the right one might take a little time. Some of the most popular include medications and nicotine withdrawal products.
Stopping smoking can have a profound effect on your health and your bank balance (usually you'll spend less on cigarettes and have more money). It significantly reduces the risk of various cancers and cardiovascular diseases. But even this is just scratching the surface in terms of the health risks associated with smoking. Food tastes nicer. Your skin improves. In fact, there’s barely a part of the body that isn’t affected by it.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
It’s been estimated that it can take some smokers 30 or more attempts to quit. So if you have a few hiccups along the way, that’s totally normal. But if you stay determined, there’s every chance that you can stop smoking forever.
And once you’ve quit, you’ll likely notice some positive changes in the body over time. These little milestones are massively beneficial to your health, and knowing what’s going on inside (and not solely focusing on the negative experiences of quitting smoking), can be a great motivator. This is where the stop smoking timeline comes in.
It takes just 20 minutes for signs of improvement to take effect as your heart rate will return to its normal rate. After eight hours, carbon monoxide levels are halved in the body and your oxygen levels are also increased. The carbon monoxide leaves your body completely after two days and your lungs start to recover. Your sense of taste and smell start to return to normal too. And the following day, you’ll find that your bronchial tubes can relax again, helping you to breathe more easily.
Over the next few weeks, the blood flow to your heart will increase considerably and after just three to nine months, any coughing and wheezing will disappear as your lung capacity increases. Long term, it takes just a year for your risk of a heart attack to have halved, and in ten years, the same for lung cancer risks.
As an added bonus, your bank balance is likely to swell, so you not only have the energy to do more, you can afford it too.
Smoking increases your risk of various cancers, including cancers of the throat, mouth, liver, lungs, stomach and pancreas. And this is just a fraction of the cancers associated with it. Heart disease, strokes, various vascular diseases, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), pneumonia and impotence in men can also all be caused by smoking.
It’s not just your own health as a smoker that’s at risk. Second hand smoke (breathing in the smoke of other peoples’ tobacco) increases your chances of developing all of the conditions mentioned above by as much as a quarter, with young people at particular risk.
Quitting cold turkey can be very difficult, and the NHS website suggests that just 3% of people that try successfully quit, but separate studies suggest it’s the most effective method in some cases. The trick is to find the best approach for you and make sure you get the right support, whatever route you take.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
How we source info.
When we present you with stats, data, opinion or a consensus, we’ll tell you where this came from. And we’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source, such as a state or government-funded health body, a peer-reviewed medical journal, or a recognised analytics or data body. Read more in our editorial policy.
Estimating the number of quit attempts it takes to quit smoking successfully in a longitudinal cohort of smokers. BMJ Open, [online] 6(6), p.e011045.
Available at:
A comparison of the efficacy of varenicline and bupropion and an evaluation of the effect of the medications in the context of the smoking cessation programme. Tobacco Induced Diseases, 15(1).
Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. U.S.A. Cochrane Library
NHS stop smoking services help you quit - Quit smoking. NHS.
Exercise-based Smoking Cessation Interventions among Women. Women’s Health, 9(1), pp.69–84.
Champix is no longer available anywhere, but Zyban is an effective alternative.
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All the info related to stop smoking you could ever need.
Take a look at our health guides.
You’ll probably feel the urge to smoke, experience mood swings and maybe even some physical side effects like weight gain — but it’s all temporary. The cravings and withdrawal symptoms will decrease the longer you don’t smoke.
Read more
If you’re not sure of which ways of stopping smoking could be right for you, or you’re a little overwhelmed by the choice, we can point you in the right direction.
Read more
One of the best things you can do for your health is to quit smoking. Here we’ll go into detail about the potential benefits you might enjoy once you become an ex-smoker.
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