Southwest Florida's Health and Wellness Magazine Health and Wellness Articles
By Daniel Olexa, CCHt – Owner, SWFL Hypnotherapy
Every cigarette takes time away from your life. Not just the few minutes it takes to drag it down from tip to butt, but also time from your future. Time that could be spent in retirement, enjoying family, being free from the cares of a 40-hour week could instead be spent fighting lung disease, high blood pressure and myriad cancers.
How many times have you told yourself, “There’s not enough time in the day?” What would you spend to have an extra hour per day to enjoy and use effectively?
Now, if you are a smoker, ask yourself this, “How much am I spending to waste that time? What is my habit costing me in dollars and time that I will never get back?”
Let’s look at the numbers. A pack contains 20 cigarettes. If we look at an average, conservative number, it takes five minutes to smoke a single cigarette. If you are a pack-a-day smoker, that’s 100 minutes you have lost in your day. Nearly two hours. Over the course of a week, that’s 700 minutes – over 11 1/2 hours, nearly half of an entire day lost to a habit that is killing you.
It is also estimated that each cigarette takes 11 minutes off of your life-expectancy. At this rate, one pack per day is reducing your life by another 220 minutes, nearly four hours!
In total, a pack-a-day habit is costing you six hours of your life EVERY DAY– two immediately and four that you are mortgaging in the future.
At an average cost of $5 per pack, it is also costing you monetarily – $1,825 per year, to be exact. You
can also add to that increased insurance costs for coverage and increased medical costs for treatment of diseases linked to smoking.
It’s time to get your life back.
How, you ask? By deciding to change. By choosing health over disease.
“But, I’ve tried before and failed,” you say. It’s time to reframe your thoughts on what is success and what is failure. With the right mindset, you can accomplish your goal of being smoke-free. I have helped pack-a-day smokers become non-smokers in less than 6 weeks. It all started with their choice to change their life for the better.
I can help you too.
What benefits will you gain from stopping now?
Within 20 minutes of quitting, your body begins to heal. Your pulse rate returns to normal and your blood pressure re-adjusts to a natural level.
Within 12 hours of quitting, the amount of carbon monoxide in your blood drops to normal and the oxygen level in your blood increases to normal. Within 48 hours, nerve endings begin to regrow and your senses of taste and smell begin to improve.
In the long-term, within 1 – 9 months your shortness of breath decreases. Within 1 year, your risk of heart disease is reduced to half of that of a smoker. Over 5 years of being smoke-free, your lung cancer death rate is half that of a smoker’s.
At 10 years of smoke-free living, your risks of a variety of cancers associate with smoking are decreased. After 15 years, your risk of heart disease is like you never smoked at all.
“But I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. I use e-cigs now. I’m just inhaling water vapor.”
Water vapor and chemicals – that taste has to come from somewhere. In a recent study by the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, the chemical diacetyl “was found in more than 75 percent of the flavored electronic cigarettes and refill liquids tested by researchers.” The study was published on December 8, 2015 in Environmental Health Perspectives.
In her article about the study, Amy Roeder of the Harvard Chan School of Communications notes how diacetyl has been linked to bronchiolitis obliterans, (aka Popcorn Lung “…because it first appeared in workers who inhaled artificial butter flavoring.”)
There have been few studies on the health hazards of electronic cigarettes. While currently not regulated, the FDA is proposing to to include e-cigs under its regulatory authority.
If you are a resident of Collier County, I am sure that you are familiar with the roll-out of Blue Zone Living to the area. Blue Zones, if you are not aware, are areas in the world where people live to over 100-years old in a healthy manner. They are active, involved and lively.
One of the tenants of Blue Zone Living is to stop smoking. Businesses who want to become Blue Zone compliant will have to become smoke-free.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. Do you choose health or do you choose to be a victim of a small, paper-wrapped cylinder of tobacco? Does that little thing really control you?
I can help you to find your power to become and stay smoke-free. Using proven techniques of hypnotherapy, we can work together to help you break this habit that has been holding you back.
Hypnosis has been used successfully in smoking cessation for decades. By communicating directly with your subconscious mind, many of the side-effects of quitting, such as weight loss, can be reduced or eliminated altogether.
It’s time to begin enjoying life, having more money and being healthy for yourself and your family.
Are you ready to choose your health?
Call me today at 239-263-4649 to schedule your appointment.