• Question: After long years of smoking and the effects if the person stopped then would their health get better.

    Asked by anon-225175 to Simon, Selen, Paul, Natalie, Katy on 14 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 14 Nov 2019: last edited 14 Nov 2019 10:13 pm

      Very much so, it takes time but the lungs heal well. The real issue is that prolonged smoking has introduced a lot of cancer causing chemicals into the blood and these are the things that cause the problems.

    • Photo: Natalie Fowler

      Natalie Fowler answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      There are lots of ‘Stop Smoking’ campaigns that tell us about the benefits of stopping smoking, some of which can happen even within an hour of quitting. For example, your carbon monoxide levels have a chance to return to normal as does your heart rate. It is proposed that within a few months your lungs have started to replace their damaged cilia, your lung function improves and your change of having a heart attack is reduced by nearly half! There is still lasting damage done, especially by smoking for a long period of time but quitting always reduces the chance of serious illness, such as a stroke or a heart attack

    • Photo: Katy Bruce

      Katy Bruce answered on 25 Nov 2019:

      I certainly hope so! I’m taking my advice from the bio guys here 😉 but what I can tell you is that I smoked for 10 years and then gave up – take it from me, NEVER START!! – and I’ve just been for a routine spirometry test (we have to have them to teach in the labs with all the nasty chemicals) and it estimated my age as only 1 year older than my actual age! So it goes to show that you can heal after smoking, but only to an extent. As I said, the best option is never to start in the first place!

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