Did you know?
Smoking is well known to be harmful to your health. It causes chronic obstructive airway disease, cardiovascular events, and cancer. In kidney transplant recipients, cigarette smoking is associated with organ rejection, opportunist infections and even higher risk of death.
Research shows that about a quarter of the dialysis population are smokers and 35-40% of the kidney transplant recipients continued to smoke after transplantation. On the positive side, kidney recipients who stop smoking may improve transplant organ success and preserve survival without dialysis.
Quitting smoking has many benefits, including:
- Your sense of smell and taste improve.
- Breathing becomes easier as your airways relax and your lung capacity increases.
- Your blood circulation improves and oxygen levels in your blood return to normal.
- Your risk of heart attack, lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases decreases over time.
- You will have more energy as well as more money to spend or save.
How can I quit?
Quitting can be hard but there are a lot of supports to help you stop smoking. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about medication and/or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) that might help. You can also get counselling or join a support group. If you are not immediately successful when you try to quit, try again! Some people have to try five or more times before they quit for good – each time you try, you will figure out what works for you and it will get easier.
Help is Here!
Visit the links below for tools to help you quit smoking or call the smoker’s helpline toll free at 1 (877) 513-5353
(smokersHelpline.ca; operated by the Canadian Cancer Society).