Shelby’s Director of Nursing shares her tips for tobacco cessation
Jeanne Coovert, Shelby City Health Department’s Director of Nursing took to the Marvin Memorial Library’s multipurpose room last week to discuss tobacco cessation and how using tobacco products affects your body. Coovert always begins these Snack & Chat talks with important statistics.
“Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, so every year in the United States, more than 480,000 people die from tobacco use or exposure to secondhand smoke,” she began.
She continued, saying that health issues caused by tobacco use have cost the U.S. billions of dollars over the last several years. She spent several minutes showing the attendees a diagram of the lungs and how smoking can impact them negatively. Coovert then showed a picture of healthy lungs compared to a smoker’s lungs. You could see the sticky tar stuck to the lungs, which affects proper breathing.
Smoking can cause cancer, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, stroke, COPD, among other issues. It also increases your risk of developing issues with your immune system and developing tuberculosis. Coovert then went into more detail about COPD, saying that it is a group of conditions that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems like emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma.
To get the attendees more engaged with the program, she had them all breathe exclusively through straws for a few seconds to see what it would be like to live with COPD.
Coovert then showed some harrowing photos of patients who had cancer of the mouth and other issues related to their time smoking. She explained that other ways of smoking or vaping can be just as damaging to your lungs, like with marijuana, e-cigarettes, hookah, cigars, and more. “It’s detrimental to your lungs, it doesn’t matter what it is whatsoever,” said Coovert.
Coovert told the attendees that there are so many benefits to quitting, some that show up almost right away. According to Better Health Channel (betterhealth.vic.go.au), within six hours, your heart rate will slow and your blood pressure will become more stable.
Within one day, your bloodstream will be almost nicotine free, the level of carbon monoxide in your blood will have dropped, and oxygen will be reaching your heart and muscles more easily.
Within one week, your sense of taste and smell might have improved. Within three months, you will be coughing and wheezing less, your immune function and circulation to your hands and feet will be improving, and your lungs will be getting better at removing mucus, tar and dust.
Within six months, your stress levels are likely to have dropped, and you are less likely to be coughing up phlegm. After one year your lungs will be healthier and breathing will be easier than if you’d kept smoking. Within two to five years your risk of heart disease will have dropped significantly (and will continue to do so over time).
Within five years, a woman’s risk of cervical cancer will be the same as if she had never smoked. After 10 to 15 years your risk of lung cancer will be half that of someone of a similar age who keeps smoking. After 20 years your risk of heart attack and stroke will be similar to that of someone who has never smoked.
“Smokers, you know, they want to quit. Seven in ten smokers want to quit but only one in ten actually do,” continued Coovert. With her presentation, she offered many resources to help people who want to quit smoking get started. She offered resources from the American Lung Association including Freedom from Smoking Group Clinics (Lung. org/ffs), Lung Helpline & Tobacco Quitline (1-800-LUNGUSA), Freedom From Smoking Plus (Freedomfromsmoking. org), and Freedom From Smoking Self-help Guide (Lung.org/ffs).
Coovert also offered these resources from the CDC: talk to a quit smoking counselor individually or in a group, get free confidential coaching through a telephone quitline (1-800-QUIT-NOW), use free online resources like Cdc.gov/quit and Smokefree.gov, sign up for free texting programs like Smokefreetxt, or use a mobile app like QUITSTART.
There are a ton of resources out there to help you to quit smoking. However, Coovert recognizes that smokers will quit when they are ready to quit. On the other hand, there are so many horror stories and terrible things that smoking and secondhand smoke can do to you and your loved ones that it seems like the best time to quit is now, before it’s too late.