Get Fit To Quit

If you're eligible for lung cancer screening, have you been avoiding it?

If your answer is "yes," you're not alone.

After nearly 20 years working exclusively with smokers and former smokers, I've learned that avoidance is rarely about inconvenience. More often, it's about fear, shame, not wanting to hear bad news and not wanting another lecture about quitting smoking.

Those feelings are understandable, but they can also become dangerous.

Who Should Be Screened?
According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, annual lung cancer screening with a low-dose CT (LDCT) scan is recommended for adults who:

Are 50 to 80 years old

Have a 20 pack-year or greater smoking history (for example, one pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10 years)

Currently smoke or quit within the past 15 years

Screening is intended for people without symptoms, because the goal is to detect lung cancer before it causes problems—when treatment is more likely to be successful.

Lung cancer screening isn't a reward for quitting...and it's not a punishment for smoking.

It's a medical tool designed to find disease early, when there are often more treatment options and better outcomes.

What About the New Blood Tests?
You've probably seen headlines about blood tests that may help detect cancer earlier and the science is exciting.

Researchers are developing blood-based tests that may one day help identify people who could benefit from additional lung cancer screening or detect cancer even earlier.

But for now, if you're someone who meets today's screening guidelines, a low-dose CT scan remains the recommended screening test.

You deserve the opportunity that early detection can provide.

Whether you're ready to quit today or not, you deserve compassionate healthcare, evidence-based information, and the chance to detect problems early—without judgment.

If you're eligible for lung cancer screening, talk with your healthcare provider.

It could be one of the most important conversations you have this year.

You know the saying, “Nothing good happens after midnight.”

In to***co treatment, I sometimes think there’s a similar truth:

Nothing good happens while waiting to feel ready to quit smoking.

Most people don’t wake up one morning with a magical surge of readiness.

What’s far more common is that something stressful, painful, expensive, frightening, or disappointing happens… and suddenly smoking feels even more necessary than it did yesterday.

The hard reality is that many of the events that finally push people toward change aren’t small inconveniences. They’re the kinds of moments that make us stop and reassess what matters.

That’s why I encourage smokers to start building readiness before life forces the conversation.

You don’t have to be 100% ready to begin getting GET FIT TO QUIT™. Readiness is often the result of the process, not the prerequisite.

Comment INFO to learn more about the process.

Just read a post somewhere from a man who said he took the patch off after just 15 days because quitting was so easy he didn’t need it and because he didn’t think it was doing anything, anyway. SMH.