Want to instantly improve your looks? Here's the secret (and no, it doesn't involve shopping or plastic surgery)...

We all know about the dangers of smoking such as getting sick from cancer or heart disease and the massive health benefits of quitting, but did you know there are many other, less obvious benefits?

Giving up smoking will:

• improve your image - stop your hair, skin and breath smelling of smoke - and make you more appealing to other non-smokers;
• save you money;
• improve your sense of taste and smell;
• improve your fitness;
• boost your confidence - there's no challenge too hard now;
• free you from the constant craving for nicotine; and 
• make you a positive role model to peers, younger siblings and even parents.

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Instant rewards - well almost

If you go to soccer training once, you're not going to be invited to join the Socceroos the next day, are you? Or if you go on a diet, you don't lose weight overnight, do you? In fact, not much in life gives you immediate rewards - but quitting smoking comes pretty close.

By quitting smoking you may start to feel some of the benefits immediately, and others after a few weeks.

• After twelve hours: wave goodbye to nicotine as it is now out of your system.
• After twenty-four hours: breath easier - you now have more oxygen in your bloodstream as the level of carbon monoxide in your blood has dropped dramatically.
• Within days: welcome back taste buds - your sense of taste and smell improves.
• Within a month: you will be less prone to colds and other infections as your immune system begins to recover and your blood pressure returns to normal.
• Within two months: say goodbye to that phlegmy stuff in your throat.  
• After twelve months: pat yourself on the back - you've cut your risk of dying from heart disease in half compared to if you'd continued to smoke.
• After ten years:  your risk of lung cancer is less than half that of a continuing smoker and will continue to decline (provided you haven't already got the disease).
• After fifteen years: the jackpot - your risk of heart attack and stroke is almost the same as that of a person who has never smoked.

Source: Adapted from Quit Victoria webiste.

For more benefits of quitting check out the posters below:

Source:Courtesy of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing.

Check out nicotine dependence for more information.