Stopping Smoking: Tips

30 January 2019
Health tips from Sanitas Estepona – Stopping smoking

Stopping smoking:
tips to turn that New Year’s resolution into reality

Stop making excuses and make the start of 2019 the perfect opportunity to quit smoking.

Stopping smoking is always difficult, with the nicotine and pyridine in tobacco that act as a stimulus to the central nervous system creating a dependence and addiction to these types of products.  What’s more, tobacco also contains tar and carbon monoxide, two very toxic substances for humans and the main reason for the illnesses and disease caused by this habit.

Because of all this, giving up smoking is a great idea, and taking advantage of the fact that 2019 has only just arrived, it’s the perfect moment to set yourself the goal of improving your health.

Benefits of stopping smoking

Benefits of stopping smoking

As we’ve already mentioned, stopping smoking can bring nothing but positive benefits for your health and your quality of life.

Among the many upsides are getting back you full sense of smell and of taste, and you’ll recover them just in time to realise that your clothes no longer smell of smoke. Your food will start to taste better, as your mouth will be squeaky clean.

Quitting smoking doesn’t necessarily just usher in a big change for you, but also for your children, as they’ll now be being brought up in a smoke-free environment, helping them increase their lung capacity. Plus, if they don’t see you smoking, they’re much less likely to do the same.

And as if that weren’t enough to convince you, think of all the money you could save by kicking the habit. They reckon that smoking a packet a day is the equivalent of 1,500 euros a year.

And of course your health will be bolstered:
You’ll notice how, little by little, your lung and heart capacity will improve and your blood pressure will drop a lot. You’ll also be drastically lowering the risks of catching mouth, throat, oesophageal, lung or bladder cancer. If you’re a man it will also reduce the risk of suffering from erectile dysfunction. 

Tips to help you stop smoking

Tips to help you stop smoking

The best way to stop smoking is to really have made your mind up to do it. Thousands of people have left cigarettes behind and all the bad that comes with them.

Now you can do the same with these few tips that could help you give up:    

Set a date to smoke the “last” cigarette. Ideally you should stick to it, but if not, at least you will feel a little bit “guilty” about it.

• It’s important you think of stopping smoking as something positive as it will bring improvements to your life. If you think of it as something negative, you’ll just go back to the same old habit.

• You need to keep yourself active and do exercise, as practising sport generates substances similar to nicotine in the brain, which will dampen the cravings a lot.

Drink water, eat a balanced diet and sleep well.

Get support from friends and relatives.

Start hobbies that will keep your mind active.

Look for objects to stand in for a cigarette.

Kicking the habit is a long drawn-out process and you can’t give up in a day. Take it easy, keep your sights set on the end of the road, but don’t be in a hurry to get there, do it in stages and take it from one day to the next.