It’s a killer – If you are a typical male smoker in your sixties or seventies, you began smoking at age 17 and have smoked about 27 cigarettes a day for 51 years. If you are a woman in the same range, you began smoking at around 24 and have been smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 45 years. And you have probably tried at least once or twice to quit like 80% of people who smoke.

Is it too late to quit? Absolutely not. Putting out that last cigarette as late as 60 to 80 can halt many of the worst effects of smoking. Yet 46% of older smokers don’t believe that smoking is that harmful or that quitting at this stage in their life is worthwhile. If you fall into that category consider this:

• Within eight hours of quitting, your pulse rate and blood pressure drop and oxygen levels in your body will rise.
• Within 24 hours of quitting, your risk of a heart attack decreases.
• After one month, your circulation improves, your energy levels surge and your lung function expands by up to 30%.
• After one year, your risk of heart disease is half that of someone who continues to smoke.
• After five years, your risk of having a stroke begins to decline.
• After 10 years, your chances of developing lung cancer are the same as that of someone who has never smoked.

Each time you take a puff you inhale more than 4,700 chemicals that have been shown to have effect throughout your body. Some of the milder effects are accelerated wrinkling of the skin, yellowing of the teeth and fingers and slower healing of wounds.