One pack of twenty cigarettes a day will cost £1,930 a year!
This article was last medically reviewed by Dr Trisha Macnair in June 2008.
Many of the diseases caused by smoking, such as heart disease and lung cancer, are seen as 'male' diseases. But the number of women dying from such preventable illnesses is on the rise.
Smoking is the single largest cause of preventable cancer deaths in the UK. Each year it causes around 32,000 deaths from lung cancer and thousands from other cancers - it's thought to be a factor in one in four cancer deaths.
Just one or two cigarettes a day are more than enough to cause lung cancer
The more you smoke, the greater your risk. However, just one or two cigarettes a day are more than enough to cause lung cancer. Chronic lung disease is also common among older smokers, destroying busy and active lives. Smoking also increases your risk of heart disease. And if you smoke and take the contraceptive pill, your risk of heart disease is 30 times that of a non-smoker. Smoking affects your skin too. It ages more quickly in smokers, with the early appearance of wrinkles and thinning of the skin.
Benefits of quitting
The good news is, many of the benefits of quitting smoking are immediate. Food will taste better and your breathing will become easier. Even if you've smoked for 30 years, your risk of heart disease will halve within a year of stopping.
There are financial benefits of quitting too. Assuming a packet of 20 cigarettes costs £5.30 and you smoke a packet a day, a year's supply of cigarettes will cost around £1,930. A lifetime of smoking (say 40 years, if you're lucky enough to live that long) means sending more than £77,000 up in smoke.
How to quit
Make a plan. Decide your quit date, detail how you'll react to temptations, even make a list of the pros and cons of smoking to keep on track.
- Get motivated. Imagine the Mediterranean beach you could be basking on with all the money saved from kicking the habit, or set your own goal or treat.
- Get support from your GP and, most important, from your family and friends.
- Join a proper stop-smoking programme. These have the highest quit rates. If you're able to take advantage of psychological support, counselling or nicotine replacement therapies (such as gums and patches) you'll have about a one in three chance of stopping for at least a year.
How much is too much?
Pregnant women should avoid alcohol completely, the government advises, although the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there's no evidence a couple of units once or twice a week will harm the baby. Binges (for example, getting drunk) are definitely to be avoided.
The main problem is that the levels of alcohol and its effect vary from person to person so you can't predict the harm. Some women drink heavily with no apparent problem, while some babies are harmed when their mothers drink only moderate amounts.
The greatest risk is probably in the early stages of the pregnancy, when rapid growth by the baby may be disrupted and abnormal features may develop.
Later in pregnancy, drinking alcohol increases the risk of miscarriage, and impairs overall growth. Alcohol is particularly toxic to brain cells at this stage, resulting in a small brain.