Stop Smoking in Healthy Aging

Tip for Healthy Aging: Get Rid of the Smoking Habit

Smoking is a process that ages the body. It is also very expensive, especially with the taxes now being levied on it in the United States. If you stop smoking, your chances of living longer and, just as importantly, healthier are much greater. Smoking is hard on everyone exposed to it, whether they are the smokers or the ones exposed to the leftover smoke.

Nearly 4,500 Americans each year still begin smoking even though the aging effects of smoking are quite well known and smoking is known to be very addictive. It is not known why people begin smoking while knowing these facts. It is true that most people who smoke start at a young age, perhaps because they lack a developed frontal cortex at this time to reason out decisions.

The Many Aging Effects of Smoking

There are a wide variety of health problems awaiting those who don't stop smoking early in life. It is of course well known that smoking causes various forms of cancer, most notably lung cancer. Smoking is also associated with problems with cholesterol, strokes, and heart disease in general. Your whole respiratory and circulatory systems are pretty well screwed up by smoking. Your arteries get harder and harder until your heart works itself to literal death trying to pump blood through, unless one of the other aging factors of smoking gets you first.

Bronchiolitis is a smoking related disease that may not get enough attention. In fact, this disease can be contagious. It is a viral infection that can restrict the airways and make breathing difficult. Second hand smoke can also lead to this viral infection. Bronchiolitis affects the respiratory syncytial. The resulting inflammation can block off the airways, or at least make them narrow drastically to restrict airflow.

Smokers are also a lot more susceptible to bad breath, the flu, and an inability for the lungs to absorb oxygen sufficiently. Of course, smoking makes a lot of things look older too. You can get some nasty stains on your teeth from smoking. Your clothes can get stained and look old and dirty. Your furniture, carpets, and cars may well get smelly and look aged as well.

Once You Start, Smoking Owns You

Nicotine is one of the active drugs involved in the smoking process that creates physical and psychological addiction. It causes many problems of its own, but you can rest assured that many of the other ingredients in smoked tobacco are much more damaging. But you generally continue to put these ingredients for a prematurely aged body into your body on a regular basis because of the addiction created by the nicotine. So without any rational reason, smoking will continue in most people unless serious intervention takes place.

Quitting Smoking Before Death

You need to get help to quit smoking before death. Beating addiction is a terribly difficult process, and nicotine is thought by many experts as one of the most difficult addictions to beat. You first need to have the willpower to see the process through, no matter how tough it gets. Then you need to find yourself a high-quality stop smoking program. Your doctor should be able to help you get in such a stop smoking program. A comprehensive stop smoking program should involve psychological counseling, as well as hep with physical withdrawal symptoms. The program should include health living practices to incorporate into your lifestyle to avoid such aging factors as overeating. The sooner you take steps to quit smoking, the better the chances will be that you will stop smoking before death.