Smoking can kill you, it can make you lose your fertility and it can alienate you from your friends. If that is not enough reason to quit smoking, then consider this - when you smoke, you cause irreparable damage to the health of everyone around you. If you have children around, you are responsible for making them more vulnerable to cancer, heart diseases and other killer diseases like asthma. By smoking, you not only ruin your own life but you also harm everyone around you, including your loved ones.

Do you really want that innocent child near you to suffer because of your addiction?

The consequences I have just mentioned are not urban myths meant to scare you into quitting. These are cold hard facts.

The American Heart Association lists smoking as the Number One 'preventable' cause of heart diseases. "Preventable" is something that you can stop from happening. Of the 2.4 million annual deaths in the United States, 44000 are caused by smoking and they are premature deaths. Premature deaths are untimely deaths that are preventable.

Smoking can also cause severe breathing problems. Each time smoke enters the lungs, the toxins in it kill off small sacs called alveoli, causing a disease called emphysema. Alveoli are sacs responsible for absorbing oxygen from the air you breathe. When they are reduced in number, the amount of oxygen that you receive in each breath gets reduced. You cannot grow alveoli, so the destruction is permanent. This in turn reduces your ability to exercise due to the lower stamina. So you start living a sedentary life, giving rise to obesity and cholesterol problems.

In the meantime, continued smoking raises your blood pressure and causes your blood to clot more easily. Soon, your main arteries (blood vessels) become narrower and your heart is weakened due the lowered amounts of oxygen. At this point, any severe shock or traumatic experience makes your blood pressure skyrocket and causes the heart to pump wildly. But your cardiovascular system is unable to handle this demand and fails as a result. Your smoking has given you a heart attack, resulting in a sudden and painful death.

This is how many smokers end their lives, slowly and unknowingly. Studies and tests have shown that both men and women are at equal risk as a result of smoking. However, smoking causes more complications in women by altering their hormonal balance. It has been shown that smoking women menopause an average of five years earlier than non-smoking women. They also have a higher risk of losing fertility and having complications during childbirth. Studies on the effects of smoking on reproductive health have shown that smoking reduces sperm count in men and can ultimately cause impotence.

Passive smoking is one of the leading causes of asthma in younger children. Adult passive smokers can suffer from eye irritation, nausea, dizziness, etc. The damaging effect of cigarette smoke is also evident in passive smokers, putting them at risk of health problems similar to smokers themselves. Smoking is getting banned all over the world and smokers are losing their social life because people are finally aware of how harmful even passive smoking is.

You can prevent the stigma and the pain. All you have to do is say no to smoking.