Cigarette smoking causes far too many ailments to list. The most commonly known are: heart disease, lung disease, cancer, and emphysema. While most smokers say that they want to quit smoking, find it difficult or impossible to do so. There is hope, and this article outlines several options that smokers have for overcoming the smoking habit, including the safest and most effective method, hypnosis therapy.
Smoking is a dangerous and addictive habit that affects the lives of millions of people around the globe. We now know the perils of cigarette smoking and smokers are encouraged to find ways to quit smoking for the benefit of their own health. This is not easy to do,Guest Posting as most smokers start at an early age. The average age of a new smoker is only thirteen years old.
A habit formed at that age is not easily broken. Nicotine affects many parts of the body and it is hard to break this addiction without some help. Nicotine addiction is only one of many diseases which can be caused by smoking. Most smokers will need some help to quit smoking and a variety of different methods exist for this very purpose.
There are many different reasons why people start smoking and develop a smoking habit. The main reason that people begin to smoke is peer pressure. Some young people think it looks “cool” when portrayed on television, in movies, and in advertisements. It also is forbidden which makes it all the more attractive to teenagers, hence the low starting age for many people. This young age makes ceasing smoking more challenging in your later years.
Media can also influence the decision to start smoking. Smoking portrayed on television or in movies can lead you to think that smoking is a safe activity. Parents can wield the biggest influence over their children by setting a good example and discussing smoking, its dangers, and expressing their desire for their children not to smoke. Parents who smoke are much more likely to have children who start to smoke.
Smokers begin to crave nicotine, a drug within tobacco. Nicotine can affect your body and mind in many harmful ways. Nicotine, once inhaled into the lungs reaches the brain in a mere eight seconds. Once there, nicotine affects your heart rate and blood pressure. Over time it can increase your bad cholesterol levels and narrow your arteries. Nicotine in concentrated doses is a lethal poison, so you can imagine the damage it does to your body. Nicotine is also addictive and this is why many smokers cannot quit smoking.
Smoking can impact your health on a variety of levels. Getting winded playing a game is one side effect of smoking. More serious smoking related diseases include cancer and emphysema. Strokes and heart disease are also closely linked to cigarette smoking. A person who stops smoking will greatly reduce their risk of developing these diseases for every year they can go smoke free.
These smoking-related medical conditions often have grave consequences. Lung cancer is almost always fatal unless detected very early and 80% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Heart and lung disease can take years from your life unless you learn how to quit smoking. There is no cure for emphysema, only limited treatment options, plus the damage to your lungs cannot be repaired. Stop smoking benefits include a longer life span and a better quality of life.
There are several different ways to quit smoking, and you must choose the best method for you as an individual. Nicotine gums and patches are made to help slowly release you from the nicotine addiction. These only work for about 10% of the people who use them. Going cold turkey is another option and this is effective for up to 11% of the smokers who try to quit this way. Other frequently used methods to quit smoking include an herbal kit that can show you how to quit smoking. It has a success rate similar to that of nicotine patches and gums.
Stop smoking hypnotherapy is a very popular and highly successful option for those who want to quit smoking without withdrawal or weight gain. Hypnotherapy has proven to be highly effective with smokers who are trying to quit smoking. Quit smoking hypnosis might sound like an extreme solution but it delivers positive results up to 70% of the time. This success rate is many times that of other methods.
The reason stop smoking hypnosis is so effective is that it while the addiction to nicotine makes up only about 10% of the smoking addiction, the psychological aspects of the habit make up a full 90% of the smoking addiction. Hypnosis treats this aspect of the addiction.
Additionally, 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by stress, and hypnosis has proven to be a safe and effective tool that can help reprogram the mind to divert it from stressful thoughts, and towards more positive and relaxing thoughts. In addition, the very essence of hypnosis is that it incorporates a deep state of relaxation.
Another 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by conditioned responses. This occurs when smoking is associated with other activities and events at the unconscious level of mind. For example, if you smoke and simultaneously watch television, your unconscious will associate the image of a cigarette in your hand with the image of the TV. Each time you watch TV, your unconscious flashes an image of the cigarette in your hand, and you feel the compulsion to smoke.
Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation is regularly used to “extinguish” the conditioned responses by disassociating the unconscious links between cigarettes and TV, driving, coffee, working on your computer, or any other situation where an unconscious association has been created.
In summary: Although most smokers think that their inability to quit smoking is due to their addiction to nicotine, in truth it’s the mental aspects of smoking that present the largest barriers. Hypnotherapy was accepted by the American Medical Association in 1958 as an effective tool. And hypnosis for smoke cessation is the second most common use of hypnotherapy today.
While hourly rates for hypnotherapists continue to skyrocket, there are effective self hypnosis programs on the market that can greatly reduce its cost. Since everyone is unique, there are no specific “magic” words or post-hypnotic suggestions that will work for everyone. So when choosing hypnosis CDs, look for programs that incorporate a broad variety of hypnotic and NLP techniques in a series of at least six or more sessions to achieve the best possible results. In any case, the fee for the very best self hypnosis programs equates to much less than the amount that an average smoker wastes each and every month on buying cigarettes.