Strong will, pharmacological treatment, hypnosis – there are many ways to quit smoking. If you are a smoker it is worth considering one of them. As the scientists claim, every year smoking shortens your life by three months.
Tobacco smoke consists of 4 thousand chemical compounds, and at least 60% of them are carcinogenic. In Poland, almost half of cancer in men and 15% of cancer in women is caused by smoking. Almost all people suffering from lung cancer in Poland are smokers.
Strong will may not be enough
When you decide to combat smoking, you should remember that nicotine is a more addictive substance than alcohol. This addiction is accompanied by the habit of having a smoke in stressful situations and rituals of holding a cigarette in one’s hand and drawing on a cigarette.
The World Health Organisation classified tobacco addiction as a disease, and as such can be successfully treated. That is why Prof. Witold Zatoński, Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Prevention of the Warsaw Institute of Oncology, advises people who want to give up smoking, but for whom strong will may not be enough, to visit a family doctor.
Your doctor will help us choose one of the pharmaceuticals available on the market which may make combatting the addiction easier.
How to deceive your body?
Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) includes patches, gums, sublingual tablets or nicotine sprays. They can be used only by physiologically addicted individuals. The therapy helps decrease nicotine hunger after coming off cigarettes. A dose of nicotine should be gradually decreased, until it is totally eliminated.
"You cannot compare any negative nicotine effects to the harmful effects of the combination of 4 thousand chemical compounds that a cigarette contains. Each and every reasonably thinking physician is ready to accept, for a short period of time, the fact that his/her patient is taking nicotine from another source only to create favourable conditions to quit smoking," Professor Zatoński explains.
The Professor feels that the so called e-cigarettes can also be of help. He stresses, however, that "the permanent replacement of one source of addictive substances with another does not make sense at all, neither in moral nor in health terms."
If not replacement therapy, then what?
Specialist medicines containing cytosine, a substance affecting the same receptors as nicotine which helps give up smoking, are also available on the market. A physician can also prescribe any medicine that impacts the central nervous system.
Besides pharmacology, many alternative methods are used in the struggle against nicotine addiction. However, their effectiveness has not been confirmed so far.
These include hypnosis. A patient whose state of consciousness has been altered is provided with a number of negative messages concerning smoking. What is more, smokers can also take advantage of anti-smoking acupuncture. During the therapy certain points on the body (i.e. the area of the auricle) responsible for the energy flow to the places related to the addiction, such as the oral cavity or the respiratory system, are punctured. Alternative methods also include bio-resonance therapy - a patient is connected through electrodes to a special apparatus which, using natural electromagnetic oscillation of the body, is to suppress nicotine hunger.
Group psychological therapies can also be of help in the struggle against nicotine addiction.
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