There is a good reason why those with prediabetes are advised to quit smoking: smoking doubles your risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.
If you are already a smoker before your diagnosis, a study even found that smoking likely induced your prediabetes, as nicotine negatively affects insulin production.
However, despite these facts, kicking the habit is definitely one of the hardest chains to break. Like any form of addiction, quitting comes with layers of emotions difficult to handle, not to mention all the physical symptoms that come with it.
For some, it’s simply easier to continue.
If you are looking to quit smoking, one of the best things you can do is to be aware of how the habit is slowly deteriorating your health and those of the people around you:
1. You are smoking nail polish remover, rat poison, and lighter fluid.
There are more than 4,000 chemicals found in cigarettes. Around 70 of these chemicals are cancer-inducing, while many are poisonous.
This includes arsenic (found in rat poison), acetone (nail polish remover), butane (lighter fluid and vinegar), and hexamine (barbecue lighter fluid). There’s also acetic acid (hair dye), carbon monoxide (poisonous gas from car exhaust fumes), and formaldehyde (for preserving dead animals).
On top of all these, some of these chemicals form other poisonous chemicals when burned.
2. You are going to live a short life.
How many sticks have you had today? Yesterday? How about the past week?
Cigarette smoking shortens your lifespan. A study calculated that one cigarette stick would shorten your lifespan by 11 minutes.
Additionally, two studies show that smokers die 10 years younger than those who don’t smoke. A nonsmoker has a 70% chance of living to 80, while a smoker only has a 35% chance.
3. You are killing other people in your house, especially the children.
Smoking not only affects your body; it also affects the people you live with. If you have children in the house, secondhand smoke is putting them at risk of diseases and even death.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, children exposed to secondhand smoke have more frequent respiratory problems, ear infections, and a greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS. What’s worse is that there is no such thing as a “safe” or risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke.
The only way to make sure nonsmokers are protected is to do away with smoking completely, especially inside the house. Toxins, for example, tend to stick to carpets. That said, babies are at a higher risk of thirdhand smoke, as they spend a lot of time playing and crawling on the floor.
4. You actually get more stressed.
There is a widespread belief that smoking relieves you of stress.
However, studies have continuously showed that smoking, in fact, increases a smoker’s stress level in the long term, as opposed to a smoker who chose to abstain.
One study corroborates this, saying that a smoker experiences higher stress and worse moods in-between cigarettes. The stress that goes away is actually brought by lighting another cigarette, hence furthering the dependency on nicotine.
5. You age prematurely.
For those who also have a certain degree of vanity in them, smoking is not doing you any good.
A study from Nagoya, Japan detailed the ways smoking ages your skin prematurely. It impairs the skin’s ability to renew itself by restricting the blood supply that assists in having healthy skin tissues.
There are also numerous other ways that smoking affects your physical appearance, including thinner hair, yellowy teeth, tooth loss, flabby tummies, and yellow fingers.
Not only you
If, at every start of the year, you resolve to quit the habit but unsuccessfully sustaining it, remember this: smoking not only affects you, it also affects the people around you. Also, keep in mind that no amount of medications or herbal supplements for diabetes will save you from further complications caused by smoking to diabetics like you.
Look at these facts and let them spur you on. Successfully kicking the habit is difficult, but it is not impossible.
