Anyone who stops smoking will notice a difference immediately.
The physical fitness improves, you get a fresh breath and your sense of smell improves.
The nasal function is improved and even the food taste better.
After a while the smoke related cough disappears.
There are improvements that affect your body, but maybe you do not notice these directly.
Those improvements are very important for your health: reduced blood pressure, normalization of pulse and the whole body starts to work better again.
How long it takes before the health risks of ex-smokers are comparable to non-smokers depends on how much and how long you have smoked.
After a few years, the risk of getting heart and lung diseases is much lower.
During the first smoke-free year, the risk of getting smoking related diseases reduces significantly.
And after 10 to 15 years, an ex-smoker is just as healthy as a person who never smoked.
Within a few years, the risk for cardiovascular disease is comparable with non-smokers.
The risk of lung disease decreases relatively quickly when you stop smoking.
It takes about 10 to 15 years for lung cancer risk to reduce down to the level of someone who never smoked.
But the risk of getting lung cancer decreases rapidly during the first year when you quit smoking.
There are people dying because of smoke shortly after they stopped smoking.
This depends, of course, not that they stopped smoking, but because these people developed these disease while they where smoking.
A tumour in the lung may e.
g.
exist undetected in a person over a long period of time.
It is never too late to quit smoking and you can do it!