How Do Lungs Heal After Quitting Smoking?
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We all know that smoking causes high blood pressure, heart damage, staining of the skin and teeth and, perhaps most substantially, severe damage to the lungs. Indeed, smoking is so damaging to the lungs that smokers are at a substantially increased risk of developing fatal lung cancer. Fortunately, even cases of life-long or otherwise long term smokers, human lung tissue begins the process of healing itself when smoking is ceased. This means that while smoking makes a person more susceptible to lung cancer, smokers can significantly reduce their risk of developing the disease by becoming non-smokers.
How?
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The fact of the matter is that cigarette smoke contains a multitude of poisons and carcinogens, and when you eliminate these chemicals from your body, your body is able to function more normally and begin the process of healing. It is a fact that people begin to see health benefits almost immediately after their last cigarette. Within 20 minutes, blood pressure and heart rate both return to normal, and within as little as 24 hours, the chances of suffering from a heart attack actually decreases. Within a mere 72 hours, a person's bronchial tubes start to relax. This allows for easier breathing and increases lung capacity.
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What Else?
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Cigarette smoke literally rots the lungs, predisposing them to infections and cancer. After you quit smoking and the cilia in the lungs begins to regenerate, within 1 to 10 months the mucus in your lungs will actually increase in volume, and this mucus cleanses the lungs. This increase in mucus can cause loose, wet-sounding coughing fits in those who have recently ceased their smoking habit. In fact, many newly ex-smokers may feel as though their lung function is actually worsening. However, all of the coughing up of mucus is actually a good thing -- the poisons that accumulate in smokers' lung tissue has to go somewhere.
In fact, it has often been said that if the damage that occurs in the lungs of smokers happened to the outside of the body, no one would ever smoke a cigarette again. This is probably true. Most smokers simply cannot visualize the rotten lung that they are carrying around in their chest and really have no idea the scope of the problem until they begin coughing up black mucus. Fortunately, our bodies are designed to allow us to heal this damage. The only thing we have to do to facilitate that healing is to eliminate the poisonous smoke that comes from cigarettes.
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