When you stop smoking, the following health benefits occur:
Within 20 Minutes: Your blood pressure, heart rate and pulse rate returns to normal and your body temperature returns to normal.
Within eight hours: The carbon monoxide level in the blood drops to normal, your chance of heart attack decreases, the oxygen level in your blood returns to normal.
Within 24 hours: The carbon monoxide is cleared from your body.
Within 48 hours: Your nerve endings start growing again and your sense of smell and taste begin to improve.
Between two weeks to three months: Your blood circulation improves, walking becomes easier, your lung function can increase up to 30 per cent.
Between one to nine months: Coughing, sinus congestion, fatigue, and shortness of breath problems improve. Lungs are getting cleaner. Your body’s overall energy increases.
Within a year: Risk of coronary heart disease is 50 per cent of a smoker.
Within five years: Death rate of lung cancer for an average former smoker decreases almost 50 per cent, assuming he or she smoked one pack of cigarettes per day.
Within 10 Years: Risk of all cigarette-related cancers continues to decrease.
Source: I Quit Smoking, United Arab Emirates chapter. (www.iqs-uae.com/)
