With Christmas approaching soon and one in four families it total poverty, it’s going to be a tough time for a lot of us.
I’ve never been one for materialistic things and Christmas is all about children.
If you’re struggling financially like most of us are what there is one thing you can give your family, it’s totally free and will be the best gift ever even if they don’t realise.
As we get older we realise the future is for our children, tomorrow belongs to them. Life has taught me, we never know what’s around the corner and by quitting smoking, not only could you afford to buy a few presents, you get to live longer to see your children/grandchildren flourish.
Nobody can predict our time on this planet but we can make changes hoping to extend ours.
As you get older every year seems like there’s an extra empty chair around the table, some we’ve loved dearly has gone to a better place but that doesn’t bring much comfort.
Personally I quit because I want to walk my daughter down the Aisle, watch my elder son thrive in his career and my youngest still loves the magic of it all. In fact we all do.
I would definitely recommend NHS Smoke-free as they assist you on your journey to quit however you decide to do it. They can offer free smoking cessation tools like an inhaler, patches and lozenges etc. but also encourage e-cigarettes and support you on your journey.
Ask yourself, would your family want that new board game or would they want you around next year?
My message is clear it’s never too late to quit!
The bonus is if you quit now, you will have some spare money for Christmas.
This year has been my hardest year by far but also my most rewarding. After smoking for 40 years and diagnosed with COPD for 10 years I finally quit the deadly cigarettes and can honestly say I feel so much better about it.
If I can help others quit it gives me a sense of achievement. Already two people have quit deadly tobacco I know by using vaping products despite all the negative press they receive.
No matter what age you are, how fit you are quitting smoking is the single most positive thing you can do for yourself and loved ones.
Even people with lifelong conditions like me have felt a major improvement and I want to pass my knowledge onto you.
Making the switch from tobacco to vaping was difficult for the first two weeks but now there is no looking back.
Maybe you have an older relative who smokes, why not buy them a selection of e-cigarettes to try?
The benefits of quitting smoking are obvious but so many people find it so difficult to do, I was one of them but not any more thanks to vaping.
This year I haven’t had one COPD flare-up, I don’t cough so hard my ribs hurt, in fact I hardly cough at all.
All our products have a discount code available if you are looking to quit smoking, just get in touch through our website for details.
If you have a loved one who smokes why not consider buying a selection box of e-cigarettes, details will be released soon or put together your own?
In case you need reminding, why you should quit smoking?
Quitting smoking can be really tough; it’s an addiction after all. Looking into stopping is definitely a huge move in the right direction. As much fun as having a fag with your mates can be, it can also be extremely dangerous.
If you look up ‘How to give up smoking’ online, you’ll be bombarded by a bunch of different products and methods claiming to be the best way to give up smoking. Not to mention, literally everyone seems to have tips to quit smoking. It can be pretty overwhelming, especially since you’re going through so much already.
Quitting smoking is one of the most important actions people can take to improve their health. This is true regardless of their age or how long they have been smoking.
Quitting smoking
- Improves health status and enhances quality of life.
- Reduces the risk of premature death and can add as much as 10 years to life expectancy.
- Reduces the risk for many adverse health effects, including poor reproductive health outcomes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cancer.
- Benefits people already diagnosed with coronary heart disease or COPD.
- Benefits the health of pregnant women and their foetuses and babies.
- Reduces the financial burden that smoking places on people who smoke, healthcare systems, and society.
While quitting earlier in life yields greater health benefits, quitting smoking is beneficial to health at any age. Even people who have smoked for many years or have smoked heavily will benefit from quitting.
- Lung Cancer
What are the 10 diseases caused by smoking?
More people die from lung cancer than any other type of cancer. Cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer; it’s responsible for close to 90% of lung cancer cases. Your chance of still being alive five years after being diagnosed is about 1 in 5.
- COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
COPD is an obstructive lung disease that makes it hard to breathe. It causes serious long-term disability and early death. COPD starts by making it hard to be active, such as playing with a grandchild and then usually gets worse, until climbing a short set of stairs or even walking to get the mail is exhausting or impossible. It can leave people stuck in their homes, unable to do the things they want or see friends. About 85% to 90% of all COPD is caused by cigarette smoking
2 million people in the UK have diagnosed COPD.
Up to three times as many people have not yet been diagnosed.
Almost 30,000 people die from COPD annually.
Over 1 million bed days per year are taken up by COPD patients.
Heart Disease
The chemicals in cigarettes make the walls of your arteries sticky. This causes fatty material to stick to the walls. The fatty material can begin to clog your arteries and reduce the space for blood to flow properly.
If the arteries that carry blood to your heart get clogged, it can lead to a heart attack.
If the arteries that carry blood to your brain get clogged, it can lead to a stroke.
Smoking can also affect your heart and blood vessels by:
- Increasing your risk of blood clots.
- Causing an instant rise to your heart rate.
- Causing an instant rise to your blood pressure.
- Reducing the amount of oxygen delivered to the rest of your body.
- Stroke
Smoking doubles your risk of death from stroke. So if you smoke, quitting is one of the best things you can do to reduce your risk.
- Asthma
Whether it’s cigarettes, cigars, pipes, shisha or roll-ups, smoking increases your risk of asthma symptoms and asthma attacks.
On top of this, smokers need higher doses of steroid preventer medicine to keep down the inflammation in their airways.
This means your asthma is harder to manage on an everyday basis so you’re more likely to have symptoms like breathlessness, coughing, wheezing and a tight chest.
In the long term, if your asthma continues to be difficult to manage, and you continue to smoke, you’ll be more at risk of other serious lung conditions like COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).
- Reproductive Effects in Women
Women who smoke are twice as likely to be infertile as non-smokers. This is true for women trying to become pregnant for the first time and for women who have been pregnant before. Smoking can also affect the success rates of fertility treatment, such as IVF (In vitro fertilisation)
- Premature, Low Birth-Weight Babies
A report published by the Royal College of Physicians in 2010 estimated that in the UK, smoking during pregnancy causes up to 5,000 miscarriages, 300 peri-natal deaths and around 2,200 premature births each year.
- Diabetes
You’re more likely to get type 2 diabetes if you smoke. People who smoke cigarettes are 30% to 40% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people who don’t smoke. Additionally, smoking increases the risk of complications once diagnosed with diabetes, such as heart and kidney disease, poor blood flow to legs and feet (which leads to infections and possible amputation), blindness and nerve damage.
- Blindness, Cataracts and Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Smoking can make you go blind. It damages your eyes and can result in vision loss. Age-related macular degeneration is caused by smoking. It is the leading cause of blindness in adults ages 65 and older.
- Over 10 Other Types of Cancer, Including Colon, Cervix, Liver, Stomach and Pancreatic Cancer
Basically all the cancers, for both cancer patients and survivors, those who smoke are more likely to develop a second primary cancer. And now we know that smoking causes at least a dozen cancers, including liver and colorectal, and reduces the survival rates for prostate cancer patients.
What are the risks of vaping?
Nicotine vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking – 95% less harmful according to NHS England. It’s also one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking.
People using e-cigarettes to quit smoking are about 95% more likely to report succeeding than those trying without, according to a large, UCL-led population survey of smokers in England.
The study, published today in the journal Addiction, is one of the largest to examine the success rates of all the commonly used methods people use to stop smoking. The study accounted for a wide range of things that might have influenced success at quitting, including age, social grade, level of cigarette addiction, previous quit attempts, and whether quitting was gradual or abrupt.
Smokers who were prescribed nicotine replacement therapy (NRT – patches, gum, lozenges etc) were 34% more likely to succeed in quitting, while those buying NRT from a shop were no more likely to have succeeded than those using no form of help at all.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/may/e-cigarettes-may-double-success-rates-those-quitting-smoking
E-cigarettes may help over 50,000 smokers to quit in England each year!
The study, published today in Addiction and funded by Cancer Research UK, found that as use of e-cigarettes in quit attempts went up from 2011 onwards, so did the success rate of quitting. And, when the increase in use of e-cigarettes flattened off somewhat around 2015, so did the increase in quit success. This led the team to estimate that in 2017 around 50,700 to 69,930 smokers had stopped who would otherwise have carried on smoking.
With the knowledge of all these facts and the success rate of e-cigarettes in harm reduction, the question has to be asked, why are you still smoking?
