Archive for the 'Stop Smoking' Category

Stop Smoking Laser Therapy. Does it Work? Is it a Fraud?

Stop Smoking Laser Therapy. Does it Work? Is it a Fraud?

Quit smoking laser therapy has been touted as a simple pain free and successful way to stop smoking. However there is some controversy over laser therapy to stop smoking.

But first, what is quit smoking laser therapy?

Laser therapy to stop smoking has been around for quite a number of years. It is, according to those who practice it, the application of low level laser to the acupuncture points in the body to stimulate the nerve endings which in turn produce endorphins.

And this, it is claimed, is a way to help smokers to kick those cigarettes and stop smoking. The release of endorphins help relieve the stressful effects of nicotine withdrawal and make it easier to kick the tobacco habit. The physical cravings are reduced and the stress of the addiction withdrawal are reduced.

This low level laser treatment is combined with counselling in most cases, and it is the overall treatment which results in tobacco addiction sufferers being able to quit smoking according to those who offer low level laser treatments for stopping smoking.

It is claimed by some practitioners that one half hour laser therapy session can be enough to be successful for getting a large number of people stopping smoking. Others claim no more than a few sessions should be sufficient.

It is, of course, quite expensive to undertake this quit smoking laser therapy, given that the actual amount of face to face time is quite limited.

I don’t intend to tell you here whether quit smoking laser therapy works or not. That’s for a number of reasons, particularly that I don’t have sufficient evidence to tell you either way. However I do intend to alert you to the fact that there is quite some doubt over the technique, and there are those who maintain that it does nothing at all to assist people to quit smoking.

Unfortunately it seems that there is little published and publicly available scientific evidence on the efficacy of using low level laser therapy for stopping smoking. Although the laser clinics claim scientific evidence it is difficult to find any, and they do not offer links on their websites to the papers published by the scientists who have studied this laser therapy. The author has been unable to find any authoritative published studies, and there are plenty of others who claim this lack of any supporting evidence means that, currently at least, laser therapy to stop smoking has to be viewed as unproven.

For example, in 2006, the US consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to stop 5 US quit smoking laser treatment companies from claiming that low level laser therapy is successful in helping people stop smoking. It is not approved by the FDA as an anti smoking treatment, although it is as a pain relief treatment.

And I document on my website a range of other sources all of which suggest that stop smoking laser therapy is a fraud or close to.

Even the companies which market laser therapy will admit to it being “experimental”.

For those in the grip of a serious nicotine and cigarette addiction it isn’t easy to find a way forward to combat that addiction and to stop smoking successfully. However anyone who opts for laser therapy as a means to stop smoking should understand that it isn’t currently scientifically proven to work.

6 Super Tips to Help You Stop Smoking

6 Super Tips to Help You Stop Smoking

Giving up smoking is very difficult. Once you become chemically and mentally addicted to this process it becomes hard to stop. However, quitting smoking for good is no impossible. In this article I intend to offer some help and guidance by giving you six helpful tips for overcoming the cigarettes and stopping smoking.

1) Think about the dangers to your Health:- When thinking about giving up smoking your health should be one of your primary concerns. Each cigarette contains over 4,000 chemicals and 43 of these are known to be cancer causing agents. Apart from causing damage to your lungs smoking can also lead to the development of mouth cancer, throat cancer, kidney cancer and skin cancer. Think to yourself, do you really want to invest your time and money in an activity which is damaging your body?

2) Don’t Overthink It:- When people try to quit smoking one of the key reasons behind their failure is overthinking the issue. By thinking about how badly you want to stop smoking you are inadvertently making yourself think about cigarettes even more and not giving the cravings a chance to go away. If you make the decision to quit try to do other things to take your mind off the fact that you are actually giving up the cigarettes for good.

3) Try Stop Smoking Products:- As you are probably aware there are multiple gums, pills and patches which can help you give up cigarettes. If the cravings are getting too much then these products may be worth your consideration. However, remember that no single product can make you quit alone. Strong willpower is required too but they are a useful tool which can make stop smoking that little bit easier.

4) Think about the extra Money:- If you give up smoking you will have more money available to you. Depending on how much you smoke you could actually save a significant amount just by stopping smoking. Not spending this money on cigarettes will allow you to do other things such as go out to movies, clubs and restaurants, go on extra holidays, buy a new car, buy new things for your house or anything else you can think of. Surely this improved financial situation is a much better option than investing in potentially lethal cigarettes?

5) Consider a Quit Smoking Program:- A good quit smoking program should help you get through the difficult time you will experience when you stop smoking. If you have friends who have given up smoking ask them if there are any quit smoking programs which really helped them. In particular a good program should help you cope with the cravings, reduce the withdrawal symptoms and address the weight gain that often occurs when you stop smoking. Most importantly the program should be right for you as an individual. Like with quit smoking products a good program will help but strong desire and willpower are still required.

6) Try Herbal Products:- Herbal supplements can help remove the harmful toxins from your body that cigarette smoke creates. They can also reduce weight gain, restlessness and cravings, all of which are associated with stopping smoking. Herbal supplements are available in health food shops, pharmacy chains and on the Internet. Like with many other suggestions in this article herbal supplements will help but they will not make you quit smoking alone.

I hope that these six tips help if you are struggling to stop smoking. If you want to quit badly enough you will make it through. Good luck with ditching the cigarettes and if you are having difficulty at any time refer back to this article.

Is There an Easy Way to Stop Smoking?

Is There an Easy Way to Stop Smoking?

If you are contemplating stopping smoking, you certainly have found yourself considering all of your options. If you are like most people interested in smoking cessation, you likely are keen on finding an easy way to stop smoking. By finding an easy or manageable course, you believe that you will enjoy more immediate success when it comes to smoking cessation.

The Lucky Few

You do hear, from time to time, tales of people who do seem to have found an easy way to stop smoking. These people talk of having given up cigarettes “cold turkey.” In other words, these men and women simply made the decision to give up smoking, snubbed out their last cigarette and never looked back.

The reality is, however, that for every person who is able to quit smoking cold turkey, there are dozens if not hundreds of other people who struggle with the whole process and end up taking up the habit again … and again and again.

It’s Not Just About Quiting

One of the fundamental points that needs to be made in regard to kicking the cigarette habit is the fact that stopping smoking really is only a part of the battle - and perhaps not the most difficult part when all is said and done.

Many people really can stop smoking - even in cold turkey style - at least for a period of time. However, the sad fact is that most people simply cannot stay stopped when it comes to cigarettes. For example, on down they road a person may face a particular stressful situation and start smoking again. Indeed, the compulsion to re-start they cigarette habit may stem from something as simple as walking into a room and taking in the faint smell of someone else’s cigarette.

Therefore, while the first step to ending the cigarette habit is stop smoking in the first instance, perhaps the most important element of the process is devising a more concrete method to keep cigarettes out of your mouth in the future.

A Comprehensive Approach to Ending Smoking

If there is an easy way to stop smoking in reality it is a course of smoking cessation that incorporates the use of a number of different tools in the process. This presupposes that by easy it is meant that you are able to stop smoking in the first instance and stay away from cigarettes down the road into the future.

Those individuals that have taken a comprehensive approach to ending their smoking tend to believe that they have devised what might be considered to be an easy way to stop smoking. By taking advantage of some of the various tools that are available to them, they have found that smoking cessation does not have to be unduly painful or frustrating.

In this regard, they can use nicotine replacement products to lessen the withdrawal symptoms associated with ending the smoking habit. In addition, they can develop positive habits and pastimes to substitute for those points in their day to day lives at which they were puffing on cigarettes.

Planning a Long Term Solution

Finally, those people who have enjoyed the greatest success at ending smoking with the least amount of negative fallout are those same people that looked well beyond the last cigarette. These are individuals that developed meaningful strategies to be used in the future. These are individuals that drew upon resources like books and ebooks that provided informational resources to deal with the various challenges that are connected with quiting smoking not only in the first instance but down the road when temptations and a wide range of situations in day to day life arise that can draw a person back to cigarettes.

Stop Smoking: Chantix Should Prevent You From Smoking Again

Chantix Should Prevent You From Smoking Again

Smoking can hurt people in a number of ways including being an addiction, with; it is believed more than 400,000 deaths resulting from smoking in the United States. It also hurts those around smokers, and involuntary smoking can cause, it is believed, as many as 300,000 cases of pneumonia as well as bronchitis annually.

Many people try to stop smoking, but may fail in the effort. However, they need to take heart from the fact that they may have to make several attempts before they are able to successfully stop smoking. Every time you try and fail to stop smoking it may be viewed as a part of the overall effort of stopping to smoke, and not a lesson in failure. It is important for you, at the outset, to realize that your smoking habit is an addiction that needs to be cured.

A Matter Of Personal Choice And Liking

Many people believe that they smoke due to liking the feeling, or because they choose to smoke and this may be due to the heavy advertising that tobacco companies use to promote the belief that smoking is a matter of personal choice. The point that needs to be considered is whether this choice or liking to smoke has turned into an addiction, which if it is the case, will prove to be difficult to break the habit. In fact stopping to smoke is as difficult as giving up on a heroin addiction, or cocaine addiction.

If you do make the wise choice of stopping to smoke, you will be well advised to try out a new tool that will help you in your endeavor. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved of Chantix as a means to stop smoking. This is not a magic pill that will end a person’s habit of smoking, but it will considerably ease the process of stopping to smoke, and will certainly require you to be persistent as well as committed to achieve your goal.

Smoking causes nicotine from the cigarette to make the receptors within the brain to release dopamine, which is a chemical that causes positive feelings in smokers. If you do stop smoking, the lack of dopamine will trigger misery in you as well as make you feel certain withdrawal symptoms, which include irritation, insomnia as well as difficulty to concentrate. There are nicotine replacement products that you may turn to, which help in continuing to release some few dopamine in the brain and thus lessens craving for nicotine.

You can use Chantix in this way as it also releases low amounts of dopamine so that you do not experience withdrawal symptoms, while it also blocks nicotine receptors within the brain. In fact, the occasional cigarette that you may smoke while taking Chantix will not stimulate your brain’s receptors as it would have if you were not using Chantix. In fact, smoking becomes less pleasurable and there is thus less desire to return to smoking.

To get the best from your Chantix intake, you could begin by taking it a week prior to when you wish to stop smoking. It is often prescribed for twelve weeks, and at first, you may need to take it once daily and then progress on to twice daily. With an increase in dosage, you will also not be at much risk of side effects. If you do manage to stop smoking after the twelve weeks are up, another twelve weeks course may also be required to ensure that you do not go back to your old smoking habits again.

Fact Or Fiction?

In this day and age where everything is a mere mouse click away, convenience is everything. Everybody is in a hurry, even in getting rid of his or her addiction - including cigarette smoking. The availability of several remedies has smokers in a quandary in choosing the most effective and fastest means to loosen the grip of nicotine. The stop smoking pill is one cure. But is this really so?

Warring Pills

The stop smoking pill is here. This is a prescription drug that provides relief from nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms that plague smokers during their break from cigarette smoking. The stop smoking pill medications in the market today are Zyban and Rimonabant. Pfizer has recently come up with Champix. What makes stop smoking pill products ahead of the nicotine patch are their nicotine-free formulation.

Neurobiology and Stop Smoking Pill Products

Neurobiology is the science that studies the brain and the nervous system of humans and animals. A specialization of this science focuses on the brain and the nervous system. Stop smoking pills were engineered to work on these systems to curb nicotine dependence; hence, its relation to the science.

Stop smoking pills work on the endocannabinoid system which impacts on the tobacco dependence. These work on the brain to reduce the degree of cravings and the withdrawal symptoms. These wreck the release of the pleasure chemical or dopamine. Champix from Pfizer reduces and eventually takes the gratification out of smoking. Zyban increases the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine the way nicotine does. The increased levels of these brain chemicals give people a sense of well-being and vitality. During the cessation treatment, people experience a vast reduction of the urge to smoke and the easing of nicotine withdrawal.

How Are Stop Smoking Pills Taken?

The stop smoking pill therapy is helping millions quit smoking by easing nicotine withdrawal pains and lessening the cravings for nicotine. The first to be marketed was Zyban. This drug gained a following after reports of successful smoking cessation treatments. Zyban was joined by other brands, the latest being Champix from Pfizer.

The Champix clinical runs showed that 44% of the men participating in the trials were able to quit after three months, a very impressive figure. The men in the clinical study were given the pill twice daily and they found relief from withdrawal symptoms. Their cravings also lessened during the weeks they stopped smoking. The first three days daily dosage of Champix is 0.5 mg. On the fourth and seventh day, the same dose is given but this time, twice daily. On the 8th day until the last day of treatment, the dose remains at 1 mg. twice a day.

Zyban is the oldest stop smoking pill, being developed in 1996. Patients are prescribed 150 mg once daily for the first three days. The dosage is increased to 150 mg. twice a day. Zyban is taken about 7 to 12 weeks for best results.

Side Effects

Zyban has had reported side effects, like dry mouth, headaches, insomnia, agitation, and change in appetite. Champix side effects run from nausea, headaches, abnormal dreams, dizziness, dry mouth, diarrhea, flatulence, mood swings, tremor, and heart palpitations. Stop smoking pills can also trigger skin reaction, increased blood pressure, indigestion, and constipation.

You should not self-medicate, nor take an extra dose of the pill to make up for a missed dosage. These can have serious implications on your health. Before taking these pills, you must see your doctor to avert damage that may stem from complications. Stop smoking pill medications are for real and are getting better. When taken right, these are indeed a boon for desperate smokers desiring to stop smoking.

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