When you stop smoking, the structural damage to your body remains
Even after a person quits smoking, some problems will likely remain, per Sethi.
“If there has been any structural damage to the body, especially relevant to the lungs, that definitely can stay and even the inflammation can take some time to get better. It may never go back to baseline,” said Sethi. “It’s a mixed bag. The acute effects of smoking will go away, but the chronic effects and structural changes in the body may get better or they may not go away. Regardless, there are a still a lot of benefits to quitting.”
Sethi adds, “The problem is that if a person has developed changes in the airways like emphysema, or the airways became so narrow and fibrous that they are no longer there, that, of course, will not come back. Still, they could have residual shortness of breath and cough and sputum from those permanent changes.”
