November is a big health awareness month including lung cancer, diabetes, COPD, and Alzheimer’s. If you have ever thought about quitting or joining the movement to end tobacco use, this is the MONTH. Most of us think about what we could do to promote a more healthy lifestyle, but sometimes it takes something BIG to motivate us to take action. Like us on Facebook to follow us as this November as we look at the reasons why tobacco is still the number one preventable cause of death in Kansas, why you should quit, and how you can join us to BE THE ONE to end tobacco use so we RAISE THE NEXT GENERATION TOBACCO FREE!

Mondays are about cessation so let’s look at 10 Overlooked Reasons to Quit! (WebMD)

You know smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, but you’re still lighting up. To help you get on the wagon, we’ve compiled a list of little known ways your life can go up in smoke if you don’t kick the habit.

1. Smoking speeds up mental decline up to five times faster in smokers than in nonsmokers. Studies show substantial evidence that chronic tobacco use is harmful to the brain and speeds up onset of dementia.
2. Smoking cigarettes raises the risk of developing lupus — but quitting cuts that risk, an analysis of nine studies shows.
3. Maternal smoking alone is associated with a doubling in SIDS risk. The risk is 17 times greater, however, for babies who bed shared and have mothers who smoked.
4. Tobacco smoke appears to raise levels of a gut hormone that increases the movement of food through the gut. This has been linked with risks of infantile colic.
5. Smoking has been linked to a man’s ability to get an erection. Men who smoked more than a pack a day were 60% more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction, compared with men who never smoked cigarettes.
6. Smokers are four times more likely to become blind because of age-related macular degeneration than those who have never smoked. But quitting can lower that risk, other research shows.
7. People whose genes make them more susceptible to developing rheumatoid arthritis are even more likely to get the disease if they smoke.
8. Smoking – or living with a smoker — can cause snoring, according to a study of more than 15,000 men and women.
9. People who smoke for more than 20 years are 70% more likely to have acid reflux disease than nonsmokers.
10. Smoking is linked to certain colon cancers.