Nicotine hijacks the survival instinct of the brain

Have you ever gone without smoking and developed an overwhelming craving that felt like, "I'M GOING TO DIE OR GO CRAZY IF I DONT' HAVE A CIGARETTE!"?
If so, nicotine has hijacked the survival part of your brain. From the very first puff of a cigarette, nicotine produced a powerful effect on the primate part of our brain that controls our survival instincts. Often people will say that smoking is

Smoking causes surgical complications

The doctor was running late for my pre-operative appointment and I had time to talk with Jeanni, the patient coordinator at UCLA. In September I had a bilateral mastectomy (mandatory) with immediate (elective) DIEP-flap (tummy tuck) reconstruction. In two weeks I will have the second stage of the reconstruction. This surgery is on the cutting edge of breast reconstruction and offers the best

If you continue to smoke, then live with no regrets if you develop a horrible disease

I quit smoking because I had cancer at a young age and knew I was at high risk for a reocurrence for the rest of my life. If the cancer ever came back, I didn't want to wonder if it was caused by my smoking. I know the answer to that question now, since in August, I was diagnosed with cancer again. While I don't know why it reoccurred, I know it wasn't from smoking. Some may ask if I don't 

Quit Smoking - Some Tips that Help!

The following are some tips that can help you to both prepare for and to maintain a life without cigarettes and these thus can help enable you to quit smoking with a little more confidence and ease.

A Plan – Pick a date on the calendar as your quitting day. Some studies have indicated that you’re more likely to stay quit if you choose to quit on a Monday. Monday is typically the start of the week for most cultures, and because of this, people for some reason are more likely to remain smoke free if they choose this day.

Rewards – Make sure you line up some rewards during the periods of your initial quitting stages. Think about booking a massage once or twice a week for the first month. Make sure you take yourself out to nice restaurants and allow yourself to put on weight. You’re making a big change that takes some effort; the job of stopping smoking permanently is made a lot easier if you use other areas of your life to enjoy yourself.

Fluids – Make sure you help the body process and to clean out the system by drinking a large amount of fluids both before quitting smoking and especially during the initial stages of your quitting plan.

Friends – Make sure you speak to friends that have quit smoking successfully. They can provide you with tips that can help. They can also provide a very good support structure who can walk you through the process as well as to be the people that can support you – especially in times of severe stress and need. You should also avoid spending time with friends and family that do smoke. You do not want to put yourself into a situation in which people around you are smoking, because you increase your temptation and your likelihood by doing so.

Hypnosis – Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are powerful tools that can help you to stop. Hypnosis is a deeply relaxing state in which the unconscious mind can be untrained, to be brought into alignment with the conscious desires of being a non-smoker and to quit smoking. You perhaps can research hypnosis and hypnotherapy further to ascertain whether you can find a local hypnotherapist who could help you. Be sure to find a hypnotherapist who has the relevant experience as well as the proper qualifications to help you.

Nicotine Patches – Nicotine patches can provide the nicotine that cigarettes used to provide prior to quitting. Using these stop smoking aids can help you ease into a non smoking reality and subsequently lessen the withdrawal effects of now being a non smoker. The body typically takes a few days, sometimes longer to get rid itself of the nicotine. Patches have helped many people get off cigarettes and may be of help to you in your endeavor of stopping.

Regardless of how you do it, quitting smoking can be a tremendous challenge but doing so is tremendously rewarding. More energy, more money, more life, more health – all significant reasons as to why you should start the process now.

Avoid any "100 guarantee" product or service to stop smoking

Several services send me daily updates on news items, blogs and other postings on anything to do with tobacco issues. I'm always amazed at the amount of misinformation available and the products that guarantee a smoker will quit. That 100% guarantee should be the tip off that it's just a 100% guarantee that they want your money. Every method will work for some individuals but no method will work

The best way to quit smoking is to never start

For the past seven years I have been visiting Mrs. Smith's health education classes at Coachella Valley High School as a guest speaker. It's one of the most important talks I do and one of the most rewarding. Mrs. Smith handed me an envelope full of letters from students that attended my last talk. Each thanked me for for talking to them and listed what they learned that was most important to

Building Hope

A large woman walked into my presentation in Hawaii. Both legs were bandaged due to circulatory problems from her diabetes. A two + pack a day smoker, she admitted she had never gone an hour without a smoke break. Her doctor had given up on her ever quitting and allowed her to leave in the middle of her medical appointments to go grab a smoke. She stayed and listened to the entire hour plus

Is nicotine addiction a disease?

Addiction Box by Dirk Hanson

This is an interesting article about whether addiction is a disease or not. The case can be made that individuals that are addicted to a substance (whether it's nicotine or something else) have a powerlessness over the ability to abstain from their nicotine (or other substance). In this post, the point is made that often addiction is a change in the nervous system

President Obama continues to struggle to quit for good

The White house released the results of President Obama's first physical which noted that occasional use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Obama admitted to smoking an occasional cigarette but what does that mean -what is "an occasional" cigarette. Regardless of his apparent health--no one who smokes is healthy. One cigarette increases the heart rate, blood pressure, releases carbon monoxide

Stop Smoking Aids for Beginners

Finding good stop smoking aids is no easy job, especially for those people who don't trust medication. In other words, if you are a person who thinks quitting smoking is possible without any prescription from your therapist it means you are heading towards a brighter smoke less future. However, there are cases when people are too desperate and don't have a clue where to start from. In most of these cases, medication and drugs that could help one overcome all the withdrawal symptoms and cravings are given. No matter how strong one might be, there are situations when the pain is so huge that you would do anything for it to go away just for one minute.

We previously talked about one of the most important requirements that a person who is willing to quit smoking must have and that is commitment. Without being determined to start a new life and to totally give up smoking you won't be able to do it, even with the most expensive aids that are produced for heavy smokers. There are plenty of nicotine replacement products nowadays. When I say "plenty" I mean really "a lot" of them. You have those that you can stick on your skin, the gum, etc. There are so many that sometimes people who are looking for solutions to give up smoking fast and easy seem to be a little bit overwhelmed and have no clue where to start.

Sometimes you just have to learn how to quit smoking from those who already did it. So why not seek the blog of an ex smoker and try to calculate his or her progress. I think that this might be a really good idea since in most of the cases people are just saying one thing and doing the vice versa. Make a commitment right now, just after finishing to read my new post and begin your smokeless life changing program. If you are a heavy smoker willing to see something new in this world, you need to stop being addicted to nicotine. The failure to achieve this goal is going to lock you in the tobacco prison for the rest of your life, which in fact, isn't that long if you continue this way.

Sure thing, I don't believe in drugs either and I never took them (honestly) when quitting smoking and even when facing those awful cravings. Anyways, this doesn't mean that I never wondered, "How the heck to I get rid of cravings when quitting smoking?". The problem is that in most of the cases this is the price that you will be required to pay for spending the rest of your life away from cigarettes. Otherwise, you are welcome to continue your daily one pack routine and enjoy a lung cancer in several years; and as nowadays they don't have any reliable cancer treatment for most smokers that get it, I suppose that you are a grown up and realize what is going to happen.

The purpose of this post entitled "Stop Smoking Aids for Beginners" is to show you once again that if you don't take action nothing is going to happen. As my main purpose is to try and help as many people as possible quit smoking, I won't possible try to influence you to use any particular method to get rid of this life taking addiction. However, if you think that being aided by some kind of drug like Zyban or Chantix is going to help, than you are welcome to try - maybe you'll succeed. Anyway, be aware of the possible secondary effects that most of these products have. It's great to quit smoking, but it's not okay to face suicidal thoughts afterward.

If you are a quit smoking beginner and you need help, you may try several stop smoking aids in order not to go crazy the first several days (mostly first week) after you stop inhaling the smoke from cigarettes and decide that you won't be smoking again. I would suggest nicotine patches, but as most of you already realize that this is not honest stop smoking, you can go without taking anything at all. However, don't say that you haven't been warned. In most of the cases you will be facing terrible pain, nausea, insomnia and many other unpleasant issues. So, take your time for your decision. Most aids to help you get rid of nicotine also have their negative aspects so don't blindly believe in everything that you are being given or told.

Charlie

Time to think of nicotine addiction in a different way

Last night was graduation for the participants in my smoking cessation workshop. All had quit smoking for varying lengths of time from a couple of days to two months. For most, it had been three weeks but a common thread was, "Why is it still so hard? Why do I still have cravings? Why doesn't it seem to be getting any easier?"
Those comments are an example of still thinking of smoking as just a

Clinton takes cigarettes to Haiti

It was an unfortunate choice that when taking supplies to Haiti, that some staffer threw in some cigarette cartons along with real necessities such as soap, water and food. But I think this is a sad commentary on how much of our society still thinks of smoking as just a bad habit instead of an addiction. I'm sure whomever bought the cigarettes thought it would bring comfort but I'm also sure that

Beware the Saboteur

Often a smokers best meaning friends and family are their worst enemy when trying to quit. Smokers need support and encouragement, but our supporters often are saboteurs instead. On Franks first day, his wife asked how he did that day. Frank, a two pack a day smoker, admitted that he smoked two cigarettes. Instead of congratulating him on not smoking of the other thirty eight, she focused on his

"Quit or Die" or use harm reduction?

Jim quit smoking when he was in his 30's after receiving a diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmunary Disease (COPD). He took his doctor's advice and switched from smoking cigarettes to using smokeless tobacco or "chew". Thirty years later Jim is in my Stop Smoking, Stay Quit class to stop his nicotine addiction to smokeless tobacco.

This is an example of "harm reduction". The premise is that