Health improvements start just 20 minutes after your last cigarette.
Most people know that cigarettes are dangerous for their health. What people who smoke might not realize is how fast their health can begin to improve after quitting smoking.
Just 20 minutes after your last cigarette, your heart rate begins to drop. Within three days, there is no nicotine in your blood.
The benefits continue, even years later. A decade after quitting, your chances of developing lung cancer is about half that of someone who still smokes.
The importance of lung screening
Early detection of lung cancer is the best way to avoid illness or death from this disease. A lung screening CT scan can find lung cancer before symptoms develop and the cancer spreads. Vanderbilt’s Lung Cancer Screening Program offers yearly lung screening with computed tomography (CT) scans for patients who are at high risk of lung cancer because of age and/or smoking history.
