According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Americans spend roughly 80 billion dollars a year on cigarettes. Along with the high financial cost of tobacco, prolonged exposure can lead to many deadly complications including cancer. Your health is a precious thing and every cigarette you smoke affects every organ in your body.

Many people don’t even remember the reason they began smoking. But now that they have picked up the habit, it is difficult for them to stop. It has become entrenched in their daily routine. It is difficult to get someone to break a habit. It takes several attempts for a person to stop smoking. That might sound difficult, but the payoff is worth the effort. Quitting helps your body heal from the damages caused by tobacco.

Listed below are just some of the many ways smoking can affect your body, according to Healthline newsletter:

1. Lungs: When you smoke, every cigarette you take in contains chemicals that directly damage the lungs. Over a prolonged period of time, the lung damage can lead to long term consequences such as emphysema, COPD, chronic bronchitis, and even cancer.
2. Cardiovascular system: Smoking also affects your cardiovascular system causing your blood vessels to constrict and  tightening and allowing less blood to flow to your body. This condition is known as peripheral vascular disease. Smoking can also raise your blood pressure and cause blood clots. Other deadly ways smoking can affect your cardiovascular health is by increasing your chance of having a heart attack or stroke.
3. Tobacco affects nearly every organ in the body: Other complications of tobacco include skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, mouth cancer, increased insulin resistance, and decreased libido.

The CDC reports that cigarettes contain more than 7,000 chemicals and about 70 of those chemicals cause cancer. Breaking the habit of smoking is difficult, but engaging in an active discussion with your doctor is an important first step to quitting. A crucial step to quitting is admitting it needs to be done. There are a lot of options that you and your doctor can discuss that can help you stop. All you need to do is ask. You’re never too old to quit.