When you finally decide to stop smoking, your body instantly feels not only the unpleasant repercussions of quitting but the favorable effects as well. After just a few hours of quitting smoking, your body starts a process of healing that lasts for years and can in due course improve your general health.



The downside is that once you make up your mind to fight your smoking addiction, you do not essentially see its resulting health benefits as definite concepts, but instead as abstract thoughts that may happen at a certain point in the future. The answer is to familiarize yourself with the “stop smoking timeline", which will allow you to monitor and identify your own regenerative process. You might be surprised that some of these benefits can be perceived just a few hours after quitting.

First Two Hours

In the 1st 2 hours after you’ve quit smoking, your heart rate and blood pressure will almost immediately decrease to normal levels. Plus, your body’s circulation significantly improves, and you may experience a warming up in your hands and feet.

After Eight Hours

Carbon monoxide is one of the hazardous components present in cigarettes. Hence, individuals who smoke have harmful levels of carbon monoxide in their blood or serum. However, when you quit smoking, the carbon monoxide in your blood begins to fall in just 8 hours. As your body’s carbon monoxide drops, your oxygen increases to normal levels.

24 Hours

Within 24 hours after smoking cessation, your risk for heart attacks considerably decreases.

After 48 Hours

Within 48 hours in the quit smoking timeline, you start to struggle with the worst effects of withdrawal. Some sort of nervous regeneration takes place, first weakening your olfactory and taste senses, but later improving both senses from this point forward.

2 to 3 Weeks

Within two or three weeks after stopping smoking, your body’s circulation will probably be substantially improved. You can take part in exercises and physical activities easily. Covering long distances on foot will be a breeze. Your lung’s function will additionally improve remarkably, and coughing and phlegm will have reduced.

1-9 Months After

Regeneration of the lungs occurs in the first to ninth month of your stop smoking timeline. The miniscule cilia cells inside the structure of your lungs start to function and develop again. You will further feel an overall improvement in your breathing, and your sinuses will return to normal once again. At this point, you will feel more alert and less tired.

After 1 Year

In 1 year, your risk factor for heart attack or cardiac disease is lowered by 50% compared to when you were still smoking cigarettes.

In the Long Term

For the long haul, the succeeding are some factors to think about: In the next 5 or 15 years, you have the same risk factors for developinga stroke as as an individual who has never smoked. Within 10 years, you benefit from a lesser risk of developing cancer of the lungs or different forms of cancer (for example, esophagus, kidneys, throat, bladder, pancreas, mouth, among many others) that often attack long-term smokers. Within about 15 years, your risk factor for suffering a heart affliction (like heart attack or coronary disease) is reduced to the level of non-smokers.

With this timeline to show you the way, you will be able to form a clearer vision of your targets and consequently make your decision to fight your smoking addiction easier for you.