Why you should (really) quit smoking
Photos Droits réservés
Words Vadim Poulet
Share the article on
Accept it: smoking is bad for you. And for your elegance. Steve McQueen was wrong all along.
Smoking is a bad habit - this is nothing new. But like every addiction, reasons to stop are hard to find. In the case of cigarettes, there are many benefits to quitting. Here are the major ones.
Let’s get past the health question from the beginning. Of course, cigarette is very bad for you and encourages the worst diseases. It really is not the best decision if you want to maximise your long-term survival chances. But smoking is an habit we can understand with leniency: one starts smoking to have Steve McQueen’s self-confidence, not his lung tumour. That being said, you should know that those perfect black and white magazine shots don’t tell the whole story. Quitting smoking comes with benefits that many a gentleman will prefer to nicotine.
A fresher breath
Every smoker has kissed one of their peers a day when they didn’t have a cigarette. They know that the smell is foul and aggressive. Smoking’s effect on breath is harmful, and amplified by the consumption of coffee and alcohol, which naturally occurs with social life and short nights. The cold tobacco smell of your mouth and clothes is of course not a pleasure for your conversation partner. Cigarette is indeed at fault : it influences the physiology of your buccal cavity. It alters your saliva, provokes gum inflammation, and encourages bad breath, caries, dry mouth sensation… Nothing too pleasant for you and others, but nothing you won’t get rid of quickly, winning, in the process, more confidence in your breath at the most decisive moments.
A fairer skin
Skin condition evolves with age. It loses in thickness, elasticity, its colour changes. This is normal, but cutaneous ageing is sped up by tobacco, depending on how long you’ve been smoking, your age and the number of cigarettes you turn into ashes every day. Dull, grey, pallid skin tone is caused by vasoconstriction, the thinning of the internal diameter of blood vessels, which hampers the circulation of red blood cells, responsible for bring oxygen to the skin-deep layers of your face.
Cigarette also provokes deep and long face wrinkles. Skin is attacked by smoke and the stratum corneum gets thicker to protect itself, making creases appear, while toxic substances that pass into the blood slow the synthesis of collagen and elastin, proteins that makes skin stronger and suppler.
Quitting won’t make your face smoother, but it will slow the formation of wrinkles and give you a lighter, clearer skin, much more pleasant to watch. Not smoking will also limit the yellowing of your teeth and fingers, make healing easier and lighten your voice. It will also prevent the worsening of inflammatory skin disease. Those things influence self-confidence more than a motorbike.
A much more pleasant life
Contrary to popular belief, quitting smoking will reduce stress. Nicotine is in fact an exciting substance that increases the physical effects of stress : heart rates accelerate, arterial pressure follows. They get back to normal two hours after the last cigarette. If you quit smoking, you’ll be calmer, in better form, and ready to face life’s hazards and pleasures.
Indeed, cigarettes cause an inability to smell or taste, by damaging your nerve endings. Getting rid of tobacco will give back their taste to the finer things in life. Living without it would be a shame.
You’ll be in a much better physical shape pretty quickly, and efforts won’t be as painful thanks to cleaner lungs and better blood flow, whose influence on every life activity is never underlined enough.
Academic research have also shown that non and former smokers have a better prospective and retrospective memory than smokers - another reason to do without nicotine.
Finally, as weird as it may seem, a fragrance built around black pepper could help you quitting. The Nicotine Research Laboratory has shown the smell, common to many men’s perfumes, can stop nicotine cravings. It also gives you McQueen’s charisma, without having to follow his worst example.
If you still need convincing, just think of all those times when your addiction led you to spend some time alone in the cold while your non-smoking friends were inside sipping on their Old Fashioned.
