14. Medical Benefits to Quitting Smoking
Tobacco is destructive and deadly with a plethora of exceedingly toxic constituents. It is known to have an injurious effect on almost every system of the body (for details, see chapter 3). This makes the life span of a smoker much shorter than that of a non-smoker; the longer you smoke shorter you live. Of course, there are exceptions. We have all heard of someone who smoked all his life, lived to a ripe old age and never got cancer. However, the odds are heavily against this. Be satisfied with the fact that the human body is amazingly resilient; it can heal a great deal, even after years of exposure to the surfeit of potent toxicants that cigarette smoke is.
Smokers who give up smoking by their thirties can thwart some or all of the peril of smoking-induced diseases and premature death due to these diseases.
However, this does not mean that if you quit beyond that age, your efforts are worthless.
Even if you quit smoking at age 60 or over, you will still have many health benefits that continuing to smoker will not give you.
Giving up smoking drastically cuts the health hazards caused by it, irrespective of how heavily you smoke, how impaired your health is or what your age is.
The improvement in your health starts within a few hours of quitting cigarettes.
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