4 good reasons to quit smoking today

No popular habit on this planet is as harmful to your health as smoking. Cigarettes  are officially the number one cause of preventable deaths in the developed world. Here are the reasons you need to stop right now.

As few as eight cigarettes per month — just 100 in a year — raises your smoking-related lung-cancer risk. In fact, any smoking raises your risk. In a study of British doctors, smoking just one to 14 cigarettes a day raised risk eight times higher than normal, smoking 15 to 25 cigarettes raised risk 13 times, and smoking more than 25 per day pushed risk up 25 times.

The 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke are lethal for your cardiovascular system — raising your odds astronomically for heart attacks, strokes, and high blood pressure. Chemicals in tobacco smoke increase cardiovascular risk by strangling the body's oxygen supply, making artery walls stiff, slashing levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and making blood platelets stickier and more likely to form heart-threatening clots.

Smoking can trigger or exacerbate short-term breathing problems including bronchitis and asthma attacks. Smoking is also closely linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or COPD. This disorder, which is essentially the combination of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is one of the fastest-growing and most debilitating lung issues among older people. In fact, it is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States — and 80 to 90 percent of cases are linked to smoking.

No matter how long or how much you've smoked, you can reverse much of the damage — if you stop smoking once and for all.

• Immediately: Your lungs and cardiovascular system begin repairing themselves within minutes of your last cigarette.
• 8 hours: Your blood pressure begins falling to a healthier range and high levels of toxic carbon monoxide gas in your bloodstream drop.
• 1 day:  your heart attack risk begins to fall.
• 2 days: Your sense of taste and smell sharpen.
• 1 month: Within a month, your lungs will work better and you should be coughing less, feel more energetic, and have less congestion and shortness of breath.

Smoking does severe damage to your health but the good news from these studies is that it is reversible. It is never too late to kick your habit. Your body will thank you for it.