Why Quitting Smoking Helps Feet

Your feet depend on blood to bring them oxygen. Blood moves through small vessels that reach every part of your foot.

Smoking narrows the small vessels that feed your feet. Just as a narrow pipe carries less water, narrow vessels carry less blood.

With less blood flowing, less oxygen reaches your feet.

A blood vessel cut open at one end, with red blood cells inside a smooth lining. Smoke drifts around it and red irritated spots appear on the lining. In the last view, yellow buildup leaves a small opening and only a few blood cells get through.

A sore on your foot needs oxygen and immune cells to heal. Immune cells fight germs, and they travel in the blood.

Narrowed vessels let less through, like a campfire short of air, which burns low. Healing slows down.

Slow healing gives small problems more time to grow into serious ones.

Quitting can start to help blood flow over time. Within a week of quitting, circulation can begin to improve.

The benefits keep building. Within a year, the risk of diabetes complications begins to drop. Quitting can still help people who have smoked for many years.

Your care team can talk with you about counseling and medicines to help you stop.

A timeline with three stops. At Quit day, a snapped cigarette. Within a week, a foot with red blood flowing through it. Within a year, bars that step down to show risk dropping.

Key takeaways

• Smoking narrows the small blood vessels that feed the feet.
• Less blood flow slows healing and gives small problems more room to grow.
• Blood flow can start to improve within a week of quitting, and it builds from there.

Try it

Today, write one question about quitting support to ask your care team at your next visit.