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The physical health benefits of stopping smoking are quite well-known, but did you know these five mental health benefits of quitting?
Some people try to quit smoking using only their willpower, without any extra help like nicotine replacement products or nicotine-free medicines. This is called going cold turkey.
But quitting smoking cold turkey can be really tough, because your body may have become dependent on nicotine over time.
In this article, you’ll learn about smoking addiction, find out how dependent you are, and learn how support options can help you quit for good.
Smoking is when you burn tobacco, most commonly in a cigarette, and breathe in the smoke. Tobacco contains nicotine, a highly addictive substance that can make it difficult for people to stop smoking once they have started. Although smoking rates have fallen in many countries, it remains one of the biggest causes of illness and death around the world.
Tobacco, also called:
Baccy
Ciggies
Fags
Hookah
Hubble bubble
Roll-ups
Rollies
Shisha
Smokes
How smoking impacts your mind
Many people think that smoking helps calm their nerves and reduces anxiety. It might feel like a cigarette eases stress or tension, but the truth is it can make things feel worse.
Smoking gives a quick hit of nicotine, which feels relaxing at first, but that feeling fades fast.
Two former smokers are the faces of a major new campaign to inspire the region’s 562,000 smokers to make a quit attempt. Mother and daughter Wendy and Amy Robinson are helping to lead the ‘Turn the Corner’ campaign, with the powerful message that every cigarette takes 20 minutes off your life.
It’s a simple question, but there’s more to the answer than you might think. The tobacco industry isn’t just made up of major tobacco companies and it doesn’t just produce cigarettes. And, notably, selling its products isn’t the industry’s only business goal.
Take a closer look to get the facts about what the tobacco industry is and what it does – including the parts it may not want the public to focus on.
Big Tobacco offers a wide menu of products, and positions each one a little differently. It implies that some are safer than others, but from cigarettes to hookahs to nicotine pouches to e-cigarettes and more, all of Big Tobacco’s products have one major commonality: they all contain nicotine.
Children whose fathers smoked during puberty age faster, a study has suggested.
Experts said smoking among boys aged 15 and younger could damage developing sperm cells, which could affect their future children.
The study, presented to the European Respiratory Society Congress in Amsterdam, found signs of faster biological ageing, compared with actual age, among people whose fathers began smoking in this age bracket.
To see blue fire that flames up as high as five meters inside a volcanic crater, I trekked with a group of tourists on an overnight expedition to the Kawah Ijen National Park on the island of Java in Indonesia.
Kawah Ijen is known for its yellow sulphur deposits which produce the iconic blue fire flames. They can only be seen in the dark.
he number of cigarettes smoked in Britain every year has been revealed in a shocking new study from Cancer Research UK and University College London (UCL).
Smokers are getting through an estimated 28.6 billion cigarettes each year on average, equating to 78 million every day.
Smokers are being encouraged to use a national awareness day to quit cigarettes for good.
Wednesday, 12 March marks No Smoking Day 2025, an annual campaign aimed at increasing awareness of resources available to support quitting smoking.
The NHS states that they hope the day could be the driving factor to helping people, offering services such as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) through the use of gum and patches.
Teenagers as young as 12 are being prescribed nicotine gum amid soaring numbers of children using e-cigarettes.
Doctors are issuing hundreds of prescriptions for nicotine patches and gum to addict teenagers, many of whom are still too young to legally smoke.
Women lose 22 minutes of their life with each cigarette they smoke while one shortens a man’s life by 17 minutes, experts have estimated.
New predictions by researchers are higher than previous estimates which suggested that each cigarette shortens a smoker’s life by 11 minutes.
Nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco, cigarettes, and vapes, also called e-cigarettes.
When people use tobacco products, some of the nicotine stays in their system after they quit smoking. Medical tests can detect nicotine in people’s urine, blood, saliva, hair, and nails.
What’s in tobacco smoke?
Tobacco smoke contains over 5,000 chemicals, including nicotine. People who smoke do so because they are addicted to nicotine, but the harm comes from the tar, carbon monoxide, and other chemicals in the smoke.
Although global smoking prevalence has declined (from 22.7% in 2007 to 17% in 2021), the total number of smokers remains high due to population growth. Globally, at least 940 million males and 193 million females ages 15 or older were current smokers in 2019. More than 75% of male daily smokers live in a country with a medium or high human development index (HDI), whereas more than 53% of female daily smokers live in very high-HDI countries.
What can help with giving up smoking?
Stopping smoking is the best thing you can do for your health, and there are a range of tools and services to help you succeed.
To give you the best chance of success, get support from your free local stop smoking services.
You can also use stop smoking tools such as:
Prescription medicines
Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)
E-cigarettes.
How you choose to stop is up to you, so find the method that works for you. Giving up smoking for good might take a few attempts or involve trying different methods. We know it can be hard to stop smoking, but keep trying.
