Are you still smoking?

More and more women have quit. For the first time, lung cancer in American women is on the decline, and the death rate from the disease has leveled off. Still, smoking continues to be the nation's leading cause of preventable deaths.

Women often think breast cancer is their number one cancer risk, but lung cancer kills more women than any other cancer. As many as 90 percent of women with lung cancer either smoke or are former smokers. Smoking also contributes to heart disease, stroke and many other diseases.

Why it's hard to stop

Women seem to have a harder time quitting than men do, according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study. Women more often feel dependent on cigarettes, and they are more likely to feel sad, blue or depressed as they try to quit. Women also worry about gaining weight if they stop smoking.

Half of all adult smokers have been able to quit, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It's hard work, but help is available-and the health benefit can begin today.

• Talk to your doctor.
• Join a support group or hospital health education class.
• At work, ask your human resource department about smoking cessation programs.
• Contact the Office of Smoking and Health of the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov/tobacco or call 800-CDC-1311).

• The risk of heart disease in women is substantially reduced within one or two years of quitting smoking. The risk continues to decline for 10 to 15 years.
• The increased risk for stroke associated with smoking begins to reverse when a woman stops smoking. About 10 to 15 years later, the risk for stroke approaches that of a woman who never smoked.

Women who stop smoking benefit even more than men do. A study of male and female smokers with mild to moderate emphysema found that in the first year after a woman stops smoking, her lung function improves more than twice that of a man's.