Smokers can almost completely reverse the negative health effects of smoking in about one year — the hard part is, they have to kick the habit.

Dr. Shripal Shrishrimal, a pulmonologist at Butler Memorial Hospital, said the psychological effects of smoking are just as powerful as the health impacts, because nicotine is an addictive substance.

“Nicotine … hits dopamine, which gives you that happy feeling. So when somebody wants to quit, they go through a lot of these withdrawal symptoms,” Shrishrimal said. “It's never too late to quit. You can achieve a lot more good health outcomes by quitting.”

Butler Memorial Hospital, part of Independence Health System, has programs that address smoking in individuals, which Shrishrimal said provide support and replacement therapies for smokers trying to quit.

According to Shrishrimal, the addictive qualities of smoking make it one of the more dangerous habits, as it is one of the leading causes of preventable death across the nation.

“A lot of people will not realize the effects of this early in life,” Shrishrimal said. “A lot of people are motivated to quit smoking after an event in their lives. I tell them if you start smoking again, the risk is going to increase.”

Dr. Antoine Douaihy, director of UPMC Tobacco Treatment Services, said nicotine activates parts of the brain that stimulates pressure and reduces stress. The combination of these effects and the hand-to-mouth motion of smoking makes breaking the habit especially difficult.

“It involves a lot of biological changes in the brain,” Douaihy said. “The nicotine itself reaches the brain and it connects to receptors … and are associated with reward and reinforcement.”

The substances in a cigarette can cause lung disease by damaging your airways and the air sacs in your lungs, and other negative health effects can unfold over the long-term.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking, from cancer to heart disease and even diabetes. Additionally, secondhand smoke exposure contributes to about 41,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults and 400 deaths in infants each year.

Douaihy said that the accessibility to cigarettes adds to the difficulty of quitting smoking, and can even influence people to take up smoking.

For people who start smoking in their teenage years or 20s, before the brain is fully developed, quitting later in life can be even more difficult, according to Douaihy.

“A lot of people start using tobacco and smoking in their adolescence,” Douaihy said. “Any exposure to nicotine can lead to addiction as a teen, and it can have lasting effects on brain development.”

The habitual actions of smoking also contribute to the difficulty of kicking the habit, with Shrishrimal saying that many people turn to smoking in their downtime, or in between activities. He also said that the desire for a cigarette will likely wane in a person the longer they refrain from smoking.

“If someone stays off cigarettes for a month or two, that craving will probably go away,” Shrishrimal said. “Another month, and it will go down significantly.”

While nicotine use can eventually become an activity that a person continues to do out of habit, Douaihy said people also lean on smoking to curb feelings of stress, which he called an unhealthy coping mechanism. He said replacing smoking with other methods of stress reduction is one of the best paths for people to stop smoking long-term.

“It's very crucial to keep in mind that when we think of tobacco use disorders, they are associated with a lot of psychiatric manifestations like anxiety, depression,” Douaihy said. “How to deal with anger, frustration, anxiety — people say they don’t want to deal with anxiety, and so they smoke.”

Shrishrimal also said replacing cigarettes with other actions is one of the most effective ways for people to stop smoking long-term. However, he does not recommend people move to vaping or e-cigarettes instead.

“E-cigarettes and vaping cannot be used as a way of quitting. The effects stay the same,” Shrishrimal said.

While the use of electronic cigarettes have risen in the United States in recent years, Douaihy said these devices still contain nicotine, so they can still be addictive and have negative health effects.

“There is no way that I would really recommend that you try e-cigarettes,” Douaihy said. “Vaping has been becoming more and more pervasive. It's a very complex phenomenon.”

While stopping smoking is difficult, and people trying to break the habit will likely struggle along the way, Shrishrimal said the end result is worth it, because of the health benefits of not smoking.

“Is it worth quitting now? I say, ‘Absolutely, yes,’” Shrishrimal said. “Somebody who goes from smoking to quitting, their lung decline goes down by at least 50% in the first few years, and it slows down the process. Similarly with heart disease, blood pressure and stroke.”