12 Shocking Benefits of Quitting Smoking

When it comes to quitting smoking, it is something that almost everyone who smokes regularly wants to do. But it is also extremely difficult to do. In fact, some experts claim that quitting smoking is even harder than quitting major illegal drugs that have extreme abuse potential such as heroin. That’s due to the high levels of nicotine that are present in cigarettes; when you do not have that nicotine, your body craves it so badly that you cannot concentrate on anything else.

Cigarette manufacturers have gotten away with increasing levels of nicotine and getting people hooked on cigarettes for decades. But if you do decide that you want to quit, and have found some kind of program out there that will help, there are some pretty surprising benefits of quitting that you should know about. Let’s take a look at 12 of the most shocking benefits of quitting smoking.

1. Benefits for Your Heart

First of all, there are enormous benefits for your heart. Most people think that smoking is all about the damage you’re doing to your lungs, but that is not true at all the fact is, you do a lot of damage to your heart and other parts of your body beside your lungs when you smoke. Even smoking a little bit damages both the heart and the blood vessels.

This means that you have increased chance of getting coronary heart disease because of plaque buildup in the coronary arteries, and that means that oxygenated blood is not going to build the travel throughout your body as normally as it should. So, if you want to decrease your chance of getting angina or having a heart attack, then you want to quit smoking as soon as possible. After just one year of quitting, your risk of heart disease and heart attack is cut in half.