Quitting Smoking

Bernadette Sinibaldi, lifelong smoker.

We do now. But smokers who feel that it's too late for them to quit have got the wrong idea. "The most common misconception is that if you have been smoking a long time you don't get anything by quitting and that's just not true, says Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California — San Francisco and author of The Tobacco War: Inside the California Battles. "It's never too late to quit smoking, and no matter when you quit, you are healthier."

According to Glantz, even for lifelong smokers like Bernadette Sinibaldi the benefits of quitting can be worth it – and not just over the long haul. "The next day your heart is working better, within a year your risk of heart attack is half of what it was when you were smoking," he says. According to the American Lung Association, blood pressure decreases and pulse rate drops a mere 20 minutes after smoking that last cigarette, while carbon monoxide levels in the blood drop to normal after just eight hours.

The heart of the matter

Although most people are under the impression that lung cancer is the main danger from smoking, Glantz says this is not the case. "One of the most important things for people to understand…is that it's heart disease that kills most smokers," he says. "And the risks of heart disease change very, very rapidly when you quit smoking."

A study published in the December 14 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine by Glantz and his colleague estimated that over 33,000 heart-disease deaths were prevented during the first nine years of California's Proposition 99, an anti-smoking program that increased the tax on cigarettes and allocated a portion of the earnings to the California Tobacco Control program, an anti-tobacco education program.

Glantz says being forced to smoke outside establishments should help people with quitting.

Of course, smoking does take a major toll on the lungs too, and quitting reduces the chance of lung cancer. While the American Lung Association says it takes ten years for smokers' risk of lung cancer to be cut in half after quitting, Glantz says that certain changes start right away. "Breathing a cigarette is in many ways like breathing a flame thrower, and the hot gases burn the lining of your airways," he says. "Within a few days the little hairs that line your airways and help clear crud out of your lungs start to grow back and within a few months, they're pretty much all grown back." He says the reason people cough more when they stop smoking is that the lungs begin to work again and coughing is the way they clean themselves out.

Smoking has other effects that aren't as obvious, though. According to Glantz, it interferes with the actions of many drugs used to treat serious diseases, so quitting can be a double-edged sword in fighting those illnesses. Also, since it interferes with the ability of arteries to dilate, it can be a factor in impotence, but this problem is usually resolved fairly quickly after quitting.

Rinsing away the habit

As many smokers know, wanting to quit and actually doing it are two different things. Those who have trouble sticking to a no-smoking resolution may soon find help in the form of a mouthwash. Researchers at the State University of New York's Buffalo School of Dental Medicine are testing a mouth rinse that makes cigarettes taste terrible.

The anti-smoking mouthwash.

The mouth rinse looks, smells and tastes like an ordinary mouthwash, but due to a copper-based salt, it makes cigarettes smoked after using it taste bad, according to Sebastian Ciancio, professor and chair of the department of periodontics at the University of Buffalo. "The people in the study have told us is they tend to get a taste of sulfur or burnt rubber in their mouth, which makes a very unpleasant taste for them," he says.

"I lit up the cigarette and took a deep breath and went 'Whoaa,'" laughs Bernadette Sinibaldi. "I mean, it's like chewing on a rubber tire. The taste is a very bad taste." The mouthwash itself (it's also being tested in a spray) tastes good though, according to Sinibaldi.

The mouthwash doesn't affect the taste of anything other than tobacco smoke and begins to work 30 minutes after use. Its effects last from five to eight hours. Ciancio says he thinks the unpleasant taste is due to an interaction of the nicotine and other ingredients in smoke with the metal salts in the mouth rinse.

Although he doesn't expect the product to make people quit smoking, Ciancio says it will help them cut back, thereby making it easier to stop. "What we've seen in the studies we've carried out so far is that patients have reduced their smoking by over 50 percent by using this product," he says. So far he has only tested 30 patients.

In addition to its anti-smoking properties, the mouthwash has another benefit as well. Ciancio says it reduces plaque, improves the health of the gums, and reduces halitosis. He says that discussions are underway with a number of manufacturers and expects the mouthwash to be available within the next year.

New Year's resolutions

In the meantime, Glantz has a suggestion for those who are determined to try and give up smoking this New Year's. "Probably the best single thing a smoker can do to help themselves quit smoking is to make their house smoke-free," he says. The reason is that it converts smoking from a subconscious act, where you light up as soon as the nicotine levels in your brain go below a certain level, to something that requires a conscious decision. No smoking policies at work and in public places also make it easier to quit, says Glantz, besides benefiting non-smokers who are no longer subjected to secondhand smoke.

Smoking experts point out that smokers shouldn't be discouraged if it takes them many tries to successfully quit. "It's important for people to remember that people don't become smokers overnight," says Glantz. "The process of becoming a smoker, of going from that first cigarette to being that confirmed, addicted, pack-a-day smoker takes two to four years. So the fact that it takes some time to undo that shouldn't surprise people. "