It doesn’t seem that long ago that we lived in a world whereby many people smoked and smoking was allowed in clubs and pubs around the UK. However, on the 1stJuly 2007 things completely changed for those who were smokers.
Around the UK, smoking in public spaces, smoking indoors and smoking in a variety of places was banned.
This meant that smoking became a less attractive habit and over the course of the following 8 years, the amount of people who smoked in the UK decreased from 22% to 18%.
Since then, the number of smokers in the United Kingdom has continued to decrease, but there are still people who continue with this habit. Perhaps it’s too difficult to quit or they have no intention to give it up. But if you one of those who is looking to say goodbye to cigarettes once and for all, these 6 reasons below should provide you with some much needed motivation to succeed.
The risks of smoking
Smoking is the biggest cause of preventable deaths in England, in fact, it accounts for as many as 80.000 deaths each and every year. It has been discovered that one in two smokers will die from a disease that is related to smoking.
If this general statement of risk isn’t reason enough to stop smoking, then the next five should help!
There is a higher risk of cancer
Cancer is one of the biggest killers of people in the whole of the UK. There are a number of risk factors that can increase your chances of developing cancer in your lifetime. One of the biggest is smoking. Smoking has been linked to 1 in 4 deaths from cancer as well as 20 of all new cancer cases in the UK.
Smoking, whether that be cigarettes or roll-ups has been linked to causing as many as 16 different forms of cancer. The most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK is lung cancer and smoking causes somewhere in the region of 8 out of 10 lung cancer cases. Smoking also causes more than 6 out of 10 cancers of the larynx in the UK.
You are at a higher risk of other diseases and medical conditions
It isn’t just the risk of cancer which increases when you smoke. It is thought that smoking will increase your risk of developing more than 50 different serious health conditions.
Medical conditions associated with smoking include stroke, coronary heart disease, pneumonia and impotence in men, to name just a few. Recent research has also suggested that smoking could be a cause of ALS, which is an incurable, neurodegenerative disease.
Smoking can alter your appearance
Whilst many of the impacts of smoking pertain to your health, it is also worthwhile remembering that smoking can also affect the way that you look. Smoking can have an impact on how much of the oxygen and nutrients that you take in manage to reach and nourish the skin. This can lead to uneven skin tone, as well as skin that looks tired, wrinkled and more than just a little bit saggy.
You may also find that your fingers become stained and discoloured when you are a smoker. Especially those fingers that hold the cigarette.
Smoking can also cause your teeth and gums to become damaged, which will not only mean that your breath is likely to smell, but also that you will be at a higher risk of losing some of your teeth compared to those who decide smoking is not for them.
Your hygiene can be affected by smoking
As mentioned above, smoking can impact on how your breath smells, but it can also impair your own sense of smell as you become accustomed to the disgusting odour of smoke.
Many people can identify someone who smokes simply by the fact that the smell of the smoke and the cigarettes themselves will linger on their clothes. You will also find that someone who smokes will have a house that smells of second-hand smoke too.
Smoking costs you money
Whilst your health and wellbeing should always be one of the biggest driving factors behind making the decision to stop smoking, there are so many other reasons why it should be dropped as a habit.
One of them is how much money you can save simply by stopping smoking. It is thought that most people who give up smoking will save themselves somewhere in the region of £135 per month. If you think about this over the course of a year then this is as much as £1,600.
This £1,600 could be used to benefit your life in numerous ways, instead of being spent on something that will actually lower your life expectancy.
