NHS marks National No Smoking Day with advice and tips on how to quit smoking

Today is National No Smoking Day and the NHS is using the annual health awareness day to issue some hard-hitting facts about smoking.

In a message posted on Twitter, the health service said that smoking increases your risk of developing serious illnesses such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as suffering from stroke and COPD, which describes a group of lung conditions that include emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It adds that these diseases end up killing 100,000 people in the UK each year.

Alongside the heavy health toll that smoking carries with it, there is also the financial impact.   

According to the NHS, the average smoker smokes around 13 cigarettes a day, which adds up to 364 cigarettes every month. 

Doing the maths, that equals to about £141 a month and just under £1,700 a year—money, the health service points out, you can easily save by not smoking. 

To help people quit the habit, the NHS is directing people to its Smokefree page, which helps people understand the health consequences of smoking, the benefits of quitting and tips on how to stay smoke free.

It includes health messages that can be interpreted as challenges or milestones: After eight hours of not smoking, the NHS says: ‘Nicotine and carbon monoxide levels in blood reduce by more than half and oxygen levels return to normal’.

 Holding out for two days will see the improvement of taste and smell senses, while lasting three days will see the return of better breathing.

The longer you last without smoking, the NHS says, the bigger the health rewards. A year without a cigarette will halve the risk of heart disease, while a decade without smoking will see your risk of developing lung cancer be half that of an active smoker.

However, quitting smoking is hard and the NHS points out that people are more likely to really quit with the right support system. 

Since different things work for different people, it is therefore offering a free Personal Quit Plan that identifies everything from how often you smoke, how quickly after waking up do you have a cigarette and how many cigarettes you have a day. 

It then works out a personal step-by-step guide to quitting that includes going to your local Stop Smoking Service, recommending alternative nicotine products and therapies and listing the range of free support tools such as the Smokefree app.

With such a range of tips and tools at your disposal, there’s no excuse to try quitting smoking on National No Smoking Day!