But there’s some good news. If you stop smoking, the benefits start almost straight away. After just 8 hours, your oxygen levels start to get better, and the harmful carbon monoxide in your blood stream goes down by half.
What is it and why is it important?
Smoking is one of the biggest reasons people die and get serious illnesses such as lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and vascular dementia.
Smoking can cause more than 50 serious health issues. In fact, because the people around you like your family, friends, and community breathe in the smoke (passive smoking), it can damage their health too.
Smoking is the biggest cause of preventable death in Southeast London – 9,251 hospital admissions and 4,200 preventable deaths each year. There are 165,000 smokers here – 1 in 2 are at risk of dying early.
Did you know that vaping is much less harmful than smoking? Lots of people in south east London swap to stop. This is because swapping to vapes is one of the most effective ways to quit or cut down on smoking. You can access free support and vapes from your local stop smoking service.
What can I do about it?
Here are a few tips you can try to help you stop smoking:
- access stopping smoking support
- switch to vaping
- avoid trigger situations, for example if you associate cigarettes with drinking, don’t go to the pub
- write a list of all the reasons you want to quit smoking and look at it often
- pair up with someone else who’s trying to stop smoking so you can support each other
- get rid of ashtrays, lighters and any other reminders of smoking
- treat yourself when you reach ‘quitting milestones’
- get active to beat cravings, even a 5-minute walk could stop you from reaching for a cigarette
Did you know you’re 3 times more likely to quit if you access NHS quit-smoking support?
What support can I get?
There’s great support to help you quit smoking, including advice on vaping and other nicotine replacement products, available on the Stop Smoking London and the FRANK websites.
You can search for your local stop smoking service on the NHS website.
Stop smoking London also has these services:
- a telephone helpline which you can call on 0300 123 1044 if you’re struggling
- a series of apps, which you can find here.
You can also access support to stop on the NHS website, and download the NHS Quit Smoking app (from the App store or Google Play), which provides daily tips and encouragement straight to your mobile device.
The Targeted Lung Health Check programme is a national NHS pilot that is being trialled in Southwark and Greenwich. It’s being offered to people aged between 55 to 74-year-olds who have ever smoked. People in this group are at greater risk of developing lung cancer, so a lung health check helps us spot early signs of cancer when it’s more treatable. Click here to find out more about the programme.
What is smoking and how can it affect me?
- Smoking is the one of the biggest reasons people die and get serious illnesses such as lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, and vascular dementia.
- It can damage the circulation of your blood, and it can make it much harder for you to recover from surgery.
- It can cause erectile dysfunction (inability to keep an erection) in men and fertility problems for both men and women.
- The worst effects of smoking are from breathing in cigarette smoke. This has more than 7,000 chemicals and many of them are very bad for you.
- Cigarettes have nicotine in them. In general nicotine is bad for you, but products like vapes and patches are a great way to stop smoking.
- The best way of stopping smoking is with a combination of specialist support and medication or e-cigarettes (vapes that contain nicotine). Lots of people in the south east London community have already found the quit-smoking support really helpful.