The IAA One Minute Blog

December is here and everyone knows what that means. It's time to start thinking about our New Year's resolutions. If you are a smoker make this the year you quit for good.

Why is it so hard to Quit Smoking?

The U.S. Surgeon General has said that stopping smoking represents the single most important step that smokers can take to enhance the length and quality of their lives. Yet quitting is extremely hard to do.

Nicotine is the reason why quitting is so difficult to accomplish. Nicotine is a drug found naturally in tobacco. Over time, a person becomes physically dependent on and emotionally addicted to nicotine. Nicotine affects many parts of your body:

• Blood vessels
• Brain
• Heart
• Hormones
• Metabolism
  

Nicotine acts like a kind of depressant by interfering with the flow of information between nerve cells.

Smokers tend to smoke more cigarettes as the nervous system adapts to the nicotine. This in turn increases the amount of nicotine in the smoker's blood. When a person finishes a cigarette, the nicotine level in the body starts to drop. The pleasant feeling wears off and the smoker notices wanting another cigarette. Over time, the smoker develops a tolerance to nicotine.

Quitting Smoking

Those who have smoked regularly for a few weeks or longer will have withdrawal symptoms if they suddenly stop using tobacco or greatly reduce the amount they smoke. Symptoms usually start within a few hours of the last cigarette and peak about two to three days later when most of the nicotine and its by-products are out of the body.

Withdrawal symptoms can last for a few days and up to several weeks. Withdrawal symptoms can include any of the following:

• Anxiety
• Chest tightness
• Cough, dry mouth, sore throat, and nasal drip
• Depression
• Dizziness
• Headaches
• Increased appetite
• Irritability
• Restlessness or boredom
• Sleep disturbances, including having trouble falling asleep, and having bad dreams or even nightmares.
• Slower heart rate
• Tiredness
• Trouble concentrating
• Weight gain
  

These symptoms will get better every day you are smoke free.

There are so many reasons why quitting smoking is important. Here are just a few examples:

• Your health: Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Half of all smokers who keep smoking will end up dying from a smoking related illness. In the United States, smoking is responsible for nearly one in five deaths, and about 8.6 million people suffer from smoking related lung and heart diseases.
  
• Cancer: Smoking can cause lung cancer, but few people realize it is also linked to a higher risk for many other kinds of cancer too.
• Lung disease: Smoking greatly increases your risk of getting long-term lung diseases like emphysema and chronic bronchitis. These diseases make it harder to breathe.
• Blindness and other problems: Smoking increases the risk of macular degeneration, one of the most common causes of blindness in older people. It promotes cataracts, which clouds the lens of the eye. It also causes premature wrinkling of the skin, bad breath, gum disease, tooth loss, bad smelling clothes and hair, and yellow teeth and fingernails.
  

Each year, smoking causes early deaths of about 443,000 people in the United States. This is the most important reason of all to quit smoking for good.

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America knows that smoking is a tendency that is hard to break, but now is the time to try. If you are looking for a way to beat the nicotine habit, it might be time to start a wellness program at your business. A proper wellness program can help you in kicking the pattern for good. Just think of IAA as your self-funded cheerleader, cheering you on to better health.

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