Smoking doesn’t just affect you. It also has a big impact on the lives of your family members, especially if you’ve got children. You might not think your smoking bothers them, but it might not be something they want to speak up about as it can be embarrassing or anxiety-inducing to call out someone on undesirable behaviours.
Here are a few ways your family will benefit when you give up smoking.
Their health
Even if you try not to smoke around them, your family will be affected by second and third hand smoke. Second hand smoke is when other people breathe in smoke from your cigarette, and it can be just as harmful to their health as smoking a cigarette themselves.
People who are regularly exposed to second hand smoke are more likely to develop the same diseases as smokers, including lung problems like lung cancer and COPD, and heart disease. Children are especially at risk, as their lungs and immune systems are still developing.
Researchers are also coming to realise that even third hand smoke is dangerous. This is the smoke that lingers on surfaces, in fabric and in the air even when you’re not smoking. The cancer-causing chemicals found in cigarette smoke cling to surfaces and build up over time, and they’re hard to get rid of.
Smoke gets everywhere and is incredibly damaging to your family’s health, even if they’re not the ones smoking. You can prevent this by quitting smoking.
Your health
If you smoke, quitting is the single best thing you can do for your health. Ditching the cigarettes means you’re a lot less likely to develop lung cancer, mouth cancer, COPD and heart disease, and you’re also less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke.
Your family loves you and wants you to be well. That may sound obvious, but it’s something we can take for granted. Your kids need you to stick around, and no one wants to see a loved one go through cancer or suffer a heart attack.
It sounds like a stereotype but wanting to be alive to see your children grow up is a common reason people want to quit smoking.
Financial reasons
Smoking is a really expensive habit, as you’ll probably know too well. The average smoker in England smokes 10 cigarettes a day. So, if you smoke 10 cigarettes a day, and a packet of 20 cigarettes costs £10, you’re spending £150 a month on cigarettes. That’s £1,825 a year!
We know it’s not as simple as suddenly having £150 a month to do whatever you like with when you quit smoking, as there’ll always be bills to pay, but you could save some of that money to do something fun with your family.
Being a role model
Children copy the behaviour they see around them. They learn from what we do, and our behaviour shapes their beliefs for the rest of their lives. Smoking teaches them that it’s ok to smoke and put your health, and the health of others, at risk.
On the other hand, quitting smoking teaches them that it’s ok to work on fixing bad habits once you know better, and that you value your health and theirs. It teaches them that it’s possible to do hard things, and even if they can’t quite say it in their own words, they’ll be incredibly proud of your efforts to quit.
Other reasons
There are plenty of other ways quitting smoking will benefit your family, often in ways you haven’t even considered. Here are some other annoyances about smoking from people who don’t smoke:
– When you smoke regularly, you become ‘nose blind’ to the smell of smoke because you get used to it, but we can almost guarantee that your family notices the smell of smoke on their clothes – and their friends probably do too.
– Waiting for someone to finish a cigarette before you can do anything and constantly having to look for somewhere to be able to smoke when you’re out and about is frustrating as a non-smoker.
– Being with someone who has to ‘nip out’ for a cigarette, leaving you with the choice of being alone or standing in the cold breathing in second hand smoke.
– The smell of smoke in a car feels suffocating in such a small space, and makes car sickness worse.
You can quit for good with our help and benefit yourself and your family. You’ve got this!
