Public Service Announcement

www.kendallhealth.org

 Date 01.19.2023

Illinois Tobacco Quitline

Why is it so difficult to successfully quit smoking? Thousands of nicotine receptors are activated in your brain the very first time you smoke. Run out of nicotine in those receptors, and the brain wants more to feed the craving. This happens every time you smoke. Medications along with counseling and support by the Illinois Tobacco Quitline are the best ways to reduce the cravings and increase chances of quitting by 50%. Nicotine receptors in your brain eventually become dormant, but it will take a while. Quitting is hard because nicotine is as highly addictive as heroin and cocaine, and the habit of the hand-to-mouth motion adds to the difficulty of quitting. Most people make 5 - 7 attempts to quit before succeeding. The Quitline can give you the tools to quit for good.

Additionally, tobacco marketing leads people to believe that e-cigarettes, hookah, and smokeless tobacco are safe alternatives to smoking. Don’t consider vaping and e-cigarettes the way to quit tobacco. They still introduce nicotine into your system and cause immediate reactions in your body, including increased blood pressure, stimulated heart, raised blood fat levels, and constricted blood vessels. The purity of e-cigarette vapor results in a very powerful dose of nicotine. Therefore, the effect is even more pronounced than if you were simply smoking cigarettes.

Positive health changes happen in your body almost immediately when you quit smoking. Serious, long-term diseases and conditions can be minimized or eliminated by quitting. These long-term diseases include:

• Asthma - Smokers often experience the same symptoms as people going through an asthma attack. This happens for the same reason — airways get irritated by smoke and become inflamed. Smoking can cause asthma attacks to happen more often or make attacks more difficult to control with medication. Smokers may have ongoing asthma symptoms and poor control of their asthma.
• COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) causes the tubes in your lungs that air flows through to become blocked making it very hard to breathe. Cigarette smoking is the biggest risk factor for developing COPD. Smokers are 80% - 90% of the people diagnosed with COPD, yet those who have never smoked can get it from secondhand smoke. Symptoms are chronic; they can be controlled but not cured. If you are diagnosed with severe COPD, oxygen therapy may be used to help you breathe.
• Lung Cancer - Cigarette smoking is the major risk factor for lung cancer. Someone smoking one pack daily for 40 years is 20 times more likely to get lung cancer than a non-smoker. Approximately 10% of patients won’t have any symptoms at diagnosis. Patients with lung symptoms alone have a better prognosis than those with many symptoms which can be a result of cancer spreading. For those who quit smoking, the risk of developing lung cancer falls for about 15 years before leveling off and remaining about twice that of non-smokers.

Call 1-866-QUIT-YES (1-866-784-8937) to speak with Quitline counselor to get started on quitting for good. The Quitline’s counselors — nurses, respiratory therapists, and tobacco-cessation specialists — can help you take stock of your addiction and create a personalized quit plan. You’ll have your own personal Quitline counselor who will guide you through weekly sessions scheduled at a time best for you.

**KCHD’s Weekly COVID-19 data ended on Nov. 1, 2022. This data can be found at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/.

For more information on COVID-19 Vaccine, please visit our Kendall County Health Department COVID-19 Vaccine information page.