Proven Ways to Stop Smoking for Good – Full Stop!

Over the past several years, many more people have been using hypnosis to help them stop smoking successfully. With all of the various patches and gums on the market, smokers are still looking for a healthier and more effective way to quit. Although nicotine products work on reducing the level of withdrawal symptoms, thus making detox much more comfortable, they do not address the root of the addiction. Because of this, when faced with a stressful situation or when in a room full of smokers, picking up the smoking habit again is all too easy.

There is a way to help reprogram your brain on a basic level that will make it much easier to stop smoking and to stop for good. There can be many complex reasons that might keep someone addicted to cigarettes. However, oftentimes even just the comfort that having a habit provides is enough to keep it going. Acting like a security blanket, the cigarettes are something to turn in order to calm someone down when stressors present themselves. Someone can work hard to delay smoking in spite of stress but, many times, when they reach their threshold they fall back into old destructive patterns. Not only this, but sometimes people just pick up a cigarette without thinking, much like driving to a destination and not even realizing how you got there.

Something beyond our willpower is obviously driving this smoking addiction and hypnosis is a good way to stop smoking by working from the ground up. Although knowing the reasons for your particular smoking addiction can be helpful, oftentimes this knowledge is not enough to get the job done. You might continue struggling for years with conventional methods, but hypnosis can make the road to recover a whole lot faster and easier. There still needs to be some conscious effort, but hypnotherapy allows your efforts to be much more effective.

Hypnosis works by essentially reprogramming the subconscious part of your mind that is perpetuating your smoking addiction. You will quickly realize that the urges to pick up a cigarette might not be as strong. Also, you might find yourself more relaxed and better able to deal with life’s stresses. Having a tool that works to put some space between a triggering event and automatically smoking is invaluable. By allowing you this distance, your own desire to quit smoking can now carry you through and allow you to live a smoke-free life for good.

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As a result of research, smoking facts related to health are well established, whilst in our grandparents’ day, many facts about smoking were unknown. In fact, previous generations were completely unaware of the links between smoking and ill health. Unfortunately, many people subsequently became addicted to nicotine. Once the truth came out and began to hit the headlines, it was difficult for professionals, cigarette manufacturers and smokers to accept and a great deal of misinformation became available.

Now, however, we do know the facts about smoking. Despite this, a surprising number of people still take up the habit and the percentage of young smokers is quite alarming.
Interestingly, the first concerns about the dangers of smoking were voiced as far back as 1858, when fears about its effect on health were raised in the Lancet. However, it wasn’t until 1950 that the connection with cancer was first made and, as we know, some considerable time before that claim was accepted as the truth.

Smoking is by far the biggest cause of home fires, yet tobacco companies aren’t prepared to make safer cigarettes, despite having the technology to do so. And it’s not just smokers who die in the fires, but also their families, including children, and even some of the firefighters who try to save them.

Around 5 million people worldwide die every year because of diseases caused by smoking and many of them will experience months or years of debilitating illness first. Dutch researchers discovered that young people are about 4 times more likely to take up smoking if their parents both smoke. More teenage girls smoke than do boys in the same age group, about 24% of fifteen year old girls as opposed to 16% of boys. And the younger a person starts, the more likely she is to die prematurely as a direct result of smoking.

The incidence of minor illnesses is also increased in smokers, due to the immune system being compromised. In fact smoking affects just about every part of the human body. And it’s likely to shorten you life by anything from 10 to 20 years.

In the light of these smoking facts is it time to think about quitting?

Waller Jamison 2007

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There are many stop smoking aids on the market today. In fact, if you were cynical you may believe that the tobacco manufacturers, who are seeing a dip in profits as well as facing prospective legal action, may have seen another source of profit. They could provide stop smoking aids!

A study in Australia in 2006 confirmed that over 80% of successful non smokers i.e. those that had quit smoking had done it themselves by going cold turkey. They didn’t use any stop smoking aids but simply stopped. So the best stop smoking aid is your own mind. Make a decision to cease and stick to it.

But if you feel that you need an aid to help you quit, here are some of the most common ones available:

Nicotine gum, patches or inhalers: The idea behind these stop smoking aids is that chewing the gum or using nasal sprays helps you to deal with nicotine cravings. There is no doubt that nicotine is such a powerful drug, the cravings it can induce can be extremely difficult for some people to deal with. By chewing this gum or sticking a patch on your leg or arm, your system is still getting its fix of nicotine albeit in smaller quantities. This is much better than smoking cigarettes which contain over 4000 different chemicals of which over 60 are proven to be carcinogenic.

But there are people who have got addicted to the nicotine gum, patches and pills and are having trouble coming off this nicotine replacement therapy. Nicotine in any form is dangerous causing a build up of plague on blood cells which can lead to heart disease. So avoid it where possible and only use as a short term aid.

Medications: Your doctor can prescribe some medications that are not nicotine based. The most well known would be the brand names Zyban and Chantix. Zyban is an anti-depressant that also acts as a non smoking aid. Chantix, approved in 2006, works with the neurotransmitters in your brain interfering with how you react to nicotine. Your body does not get the same pleasure or fix from using the nicotine. Neither of these drugs are suitable for long term use and wouldn’t be prescribed usually for pregnant or breastfeeding women. They can also cause some unpleasant side effects such as nausea and bowel disturbances. But both have been proven to help some people quit smoking.

Other stop smoking aids include hypnosis, acupuncture, yoga and aromatherapy and are worth a try. Some herbal remedies such as Lobelia and St John’s Wort, have helped some people to quit smoking. But, as these products interfere with other medications, they are not suitable for a variety of patients and can be quite addictive their own right, you may want to give these particular stop smoking aids a miss.

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There are many benefits to stopping smoking. These benefits are the reason why you should stop smoking. They wont in themselves help you stop smoking but they will provide you with motivation to go on and learn how to stop smoking successfully.

Stop smoking benefit #1: Your blood is partially ‘disabled’ by cigarette smoke. Carbon monoxide, a lethal gas found in every cigarette you smoke binds to the haemoglobin in your red blood cells. The carbon monoxide locks the red blood cell and stops it from being able to carry oxygen around your body. Smoking knocks out about 15% of your blood’s oxygen carrying capacity. When you stop smoking, your body will repair your blood and it will be back to normal within 2 days!

Stop smoking benefit #2: Cigarette smoke and the cocktail of 3,500 chemicals found in it, have damaged nerves throughout your body. Within 2 days your body will start to re-grow these damaged nerves. Your sense of taste and smell will sharpen. You will not need to salt your food as heavily as you used to.

Stop smoking benefit #3: Smokers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure. When you stop smoking, your blood pressure will come down without any other intervention just from stopping smoking. High blood pressure is known as the ’silent killer’ that often goes unnoticed in people of middle age. High blood pressure makes your heart work harder and can result in an enlarged heart and heart disease. It is advisable to ask you doctor for a blood pressure check the next time you see them.

Stop smoking benefit #4: 90% of all lung cancer sufferers are smokers. The vast majority of smokers stop smoking the minute they are diagnosed with lung cancer, proving that quitting is possible. 10 years after quitting smoking, your risk of lung cancer will have halved.

Stop smoking benefit #5: Naturally, inhaling hot toxic gasses into your lungs 20 times a day causes considerable damage. Most significantly, smoking is a major contributor in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD. COPD includes such illnesses as bronchitis (the inflammation of the lung bronchioles (tubes)) and emphysema. Emphysema is when your lung tissues lose their elasticity and you cannot breath normally. Death from emphysema comes in the form of a slow and utterly debilitating suffocation over the course of a few years. It is irreversible and incurable.

Stop smoking benefit #6: Between 5 and 15 years after quitting smoking, your risk of a stroke will have returned to that of a non-smoker (depending upon other influencing factors such as diet).

Stop smoking benefit #7: On average, smokers die between 8 and 10 years earlier than non-smokers. Stopping smoking even in middle age can reduce the risks of ill health significantly and there are always benefits in stopping smoking, no matter what your age.

Stop smoking benefit #8: After years of smoking, you will have suffered from a chronic cough. Between 3 and 12 months after stopping smoking, this cough should have disappeared.

Stop smoking benefit #9: Within 3 months of stopping smoking, your circulation should have improved significantly. If you used to suffer from ‘pins and needles’, they should be a thing of the past now. Your risk of heart attack will have reduced significantly.

Stop smoking benefit #10: Not only can you smell better you do smell better too! Your general odour will be much more pleasant to those around you.

There is a Japanese proverb that says "fall down seven times, get up eight". Stopping smoking is just like that too. You have to keep trying to quit. My advice as ever is never stop trying to quit.

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