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Long-Term Effects of Quitting Smoking

Some long-term effects of quitting smoking make it all worth the withdrawal symptoms. The effects start the day you quit and can improve your health over the months and years. You can improve your health when you quit smoking, even if you have smoked for years.

  1. The Day You Quit

    • Although your last cigarette is the first step to quitting smoking, it is the start to your long-term effects after you stop smoking. Twenty minutes after you have had your last cigarette, you will have a drop in blood pressure. After about eight hours, your blood's carbon-monoxide level returns to normal and 24 hours after your last cigarette, you have already lowered your chances of a heart attack.

    Up to Three Months

    • From two weeks to three months after your last cigarette, you will have an improvement in circulation and your lungs will start to function better. At this time, you could walk up the stairs without any breathing complications. Your sense of smell starts becoming clearer.

    Up to One Year

    • At nine months, you will have fewer bouts of shortness of breath, less fatigue, congestion, sinus problems and less coughing. This is the time when your lungs are starting to clear up from all the tar and nicotine you were inhaling for years. At one year, the risk of a heart attack is less than half than what it was if you would have kept smoking. You are enjoying the taste of foods in a different way than before.

    Five to 15 Years

    • After you have quit smoking for five years, you chance of a heart attack, which causes permanent damage to the heart, is about the same as someone who has not smoked. At 10 years, your chances of avoiding lung disease are improved, as are the chances of developing cancer of the pancreas, kidney, bladder, esophagus, throat or mouth. At 15 years, your chances of heart disease, such as angina, are the same as someone who did not smoke.

    Warning

    • These long-term effects are only for those who quit smoking and don't fall back into the habit from time to time. Other health problems could impact these effects, and it make take longer to get to the point of a non-smoker status.

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