Quit Smoking Aids and Quit Smoking Tips

Welcome

I will try to encompass many topics in the arena of quitting smoking as this blog evolves. I will examine the various ways for you to quit smoking. I will explain to you the benefits and downsides of each quit smoking method so you can judge them for yourself. I will give you dozens of quit smoking tips and offer help for you to quit smoking easier than you ever thought possible. I will give you easy access to the quit smoking helplines offered in the United States and Canada, etc., etc.

If you are thinking about quitting in the days to come, perhaps you will want to bookmark this blog and check in with us every few days for updates. If you have a story to share about quitting smoking, I will be happy to post it here. Go to our Contact Page and email me … attention Larry … and I will review your story.

Here is a brief introduction to my qualifications in this field. I have been in the business of helping people to quit smoking for more than 12 years now. I developed Canada’s first non-nicotine based quit smoking medicine to be approved by Health Canada. It is a quit smoking pill or better yet, a capsule, as seen in the picture below.

One of the planet’s top clinical herbalists told a large Canadian newspaper “expect a 40% success rate” if you take this medicine.
This high success rate has been proven because we have had less than 1% in returns since we placed a Money Back Guarantee on this OTC medicine!

Since I developed this new quit smoking medicine I have been nominated for the Order of British Columbia, the Manning Awards in Scientific Innovation as well as having the product’s television commercial being nominated for a Bessy Award in commercial excellence. I have helped tens of thousands of smokers to finally quit the habit.

This new quit smoking aid has been featured in the major newspapers and magazines across Canada as well as being featured on 100’s of radio stations across North America. This herbal medicine to help people quit smoking has even been seen on “THE VIEW” with Whoopi Goldberg on Oct.29/2007.

I would have to say that I am somewhat of an expert in this particular niche. I am aware of government regulations in Canada and the United States regarding herbal medicines to help people quit smoking. And this is one of the topics I will expound on in future posts to this blog.

Today I will tell you this … over the years there have been numerous companies offering herbal based quit smoking products and claiming that these products are medicines to help people quit smoking.
For one thing these herbal medicines are considered by the FDA as dietary supplements which are not allowed to make medical claims of any type! How do they get away with this you ask? That is a good question. And we will get into this, I promise.

If you live in the U.S., Canada or anywhere else in the world, and are considering purchasing a dietary supplement to quit smoking, know this, these products are NOT approved by the FDA and in many cases do not help the quitter. In fact these American supplements could make you very sick - or worse. I have heard of some companies making these products in their garage! Take it from someone who knows - these unscrupulous companies and their products could be very dangerous to your health.

Smoking is one of those bad habits that are really hard to break and yet smoking can have a devastating impact on your health and your family life. If you are going to learn to break any habit stop smoking and fix your health and your marriage all in one go.

Bad habits are controlling and rule your life, how many times have you promised to give up smoking and yet here you are still throwing money down the drain in pursuit of death!

You may not care how long you live and you may not care that your clothes and your house stink of smoke but what about your partner and your family. Is it fair to make your children breath in the smoke that you throw in their direction even if it’s just off your clothes? What about your partner, there are many petty habits that I would agree your spouse may just have to learn to live with but smoking is in a completely different league. By continuing to smoke you are showing a lack of care towards your family by the shear fact that you are prepared to go to your grave years early, perhaps missing your children grow up and leaving your partner alone just because you are not prepared to take one little step and learn how to break the smoking habit.

I admit that giving up smoking isn’t easy but it can be done, with a little effort and determination you can break any habit.

The evidence against smoking is mounting and along side the evidence of the real harm smoking can cause is the increasing social disapproval of smoking.

You might believe it doesn’t matter that death is a long way off but the older you get the quicker life passes you by and all too soon you wish you had broken the smoking habit years before.

I lost my mother in law to lung cancer a few years back. She was an otherwise healthy individual who enjoyed life to the full. Smoking destroyed her final years and significantly cut short her life. Once she understood that there was more to life than smoking it was too late to for her to break the habit. She left behind an adoring husband and family and her husband now has to see out a good many of his final years alone.

Take it from me, now is the time to stop smoking, not next week, next month or next year. Break the habit now, stop smoking today and if you can’t do it alone, and many people can’t, get help.

Submitted By: Terry Ross

Smokers often complain that they are made to feel uncomfortable smoking around non-smokers. There are in fact many good reasons why non-smokers feel uncomfortable when they are in the company of somebody smoking and it isn’t just the bad smell.

The inhalation of secondhand smoke is referred to as passive smoking. Passive smoking consists of ‘sidestream’ smoke and ‘mainstream’ smoke. Sidestream smoke comes from the tip of the cigarette when it is being burnt. Mainstream smoke is smoke that a smoker has initially inhaled and exhaled from the cigarette, you in turn inhale a small proportion of this mainstream smoke. Cigarettes contain over 4,000 chemicals which are released when the cigarette is burnt in the form of gases and particles.

Given the trend in introducing laws which ban smoking in public, the problem of passive smoking has been reduced when you are in bars etc. It is however perfectly legal to smoke in your own home which means that your family are still at risk of passive smoking.

The milder side effects of passive smoking are there for us all to see and even smokers have most likely been on the receiving end at some point. These milder side effects include

• irritation of the eyes
• headache
• sore throat
• coughing
• dizziness
• the feeling of sickness, nausea

There are however more potentially serious risks to those who are exposed to passive smoke. According to the BBC website, “Non-smokers who are exposed to passive smoking in the home, have a 25% increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer”. This is a worrying statistic which every mother, father, husband or wife should be concerned about. Are you putting your loved ones’ lives at risk?

Some of the other claimed serious side effects other heart disease and lung cancer are

• miscarriage and birth defects
• asthma
• greater risk of developing allergies
• depression
• anxiety

There was much controversy when laws were first introduced to ban smoking in public places. There were claims of human rights violations and the potential negative impact on commerce. Commerce hasn’t been as affected as much as first feared which has reduced the impact that this argument can carry when used to prevent more laws from being introduced. Given the public’s support for these laws, how long will it be before they are calling for smoking to be banned in the home?

Author: Nigel Howell

Who is the main enemy of a smoker? It is the nicotine, which is no ordinary addiction. It consists of 4000 poisonous elements and 40 of them are linked with cancer disease. So, if an individual is to be saved from smoking, the problem of nicotine has to be tackled on the priority basis. Excess nicotine has to be drained out of the body. The purpose of Nicotine Replacement Therapies and Nicotine Therapies is the same. Other sidekicks like patch do render a helping hand. But they can not give you total freedom. They can join in the freedom struggle. But your strong will power has to lead this struggle against the cigarettes. It is the main stop smoking product.

The battle against nicotine is intense. During this type of treatment, the individual is barred from smoking, but given appropriate doses of nicotine to avoid unpleasant consequences. This keeps his state of mind in proper shape and gradually, the dosage of nicotine is reduced.

The other stop smoking products are gums and patches. As for the gum, the formula applied is the same. Nicotine is laced with chewing gum. The efforts to quit smoking are as old as smoking. The FDA approved gum was developed in the year 1984. But even the FDA approval could not prove the final merit of the gum.

Many people became addicted to it. Though, in the initial phase of the introduction of the drug on the commercial scale, it was appreciated. Then nasal sprays, inhalers and what are known as transdermal skin patch took the market by storm. The uses of the patches were greatly satisfying.

To bid adieu to smoking, patch or no patch, gum or no gum, is the ultimate that you can achieve in this area of addiction. Kicking up the smoking addiction may become secondary if your main resolution is in tact. Come to the non-smoker’s paradise. You will understand the difference, what it was to remain a smoker, when you find deeply addicted people moving around you.

Once you quit smoking you should not fall into a false sense of security, thinking that you are the winner. Join the non-smoker’s group and keep away from smokers. There is nothing discourteous about it. After all, it is your life. If you are in the company of people who are in search of quit smoking process, your confidence will grow.

Laser treatment, and acupuncture treatment are the other procedures that help you in your sincere efforts to stop smoking.

Author: Ashish Jain

Smoking - Impact of Smoking to male sexual Health

Cigarette smoking is the root cause of a variety of life-threatening diseases, including lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and Erectile Dysfunction. Cigarette smoking approximately causes 430,000 deaths each year directly. Smoking is responsible for disorders in all parts of the body, including the digestive system, respiratory system and human impotence.

Current estimates indicate that about one-third of all adults smoke. And, while adult men seem to be smoking less, women and teenagers of both sexes seem to be smoking more.

Harmful Effects of Smoking

Smoking has harmful effects on health. It affects all parts of the digestive system, causing common disorders such as heartburn, heart attack and peptic ulcers. Smoking also increases the risk of Crohn’s disease and possibly gallstones. Smoking also seems to have adverse affect on liver too, it changes the way it handles drugs and alcohol.

Smoking also contributes to impotence by reducing the flow of blood needed for an erection. According to British Medical Association (BMA) up to 120,000 UK men in their 30s and 40s are impotent as a direct consequence of smoking. This figure is likely to be an underestimate, because it does not include impotence due to previous smoking in men who no longer smoke. Apart from impotence other effects of smoking on male sexual health includes:

• Reduction in volume of ejaculation
• Reduction in sperm count
• Abnormal sperm shape

How smoking affects

When you smoke tobacco, hydrocarbons are inhaled damage the lining of arteries and start forming plaques in their inner linings thus reducing blood flow. Nicotine constricts arteries to make them even narrower. When your arteries leading to your heart are completely blocked, you suffer a heart attack. When the arteries leading to a man’s penis are blocked, he is impotent. This process is significantly impaired by smoking.

Prospects of recovery:

Smoking is a major and avoidable threat for sexual health. If main causes of erectile function are acute responses to nicotine, then immediate improvements on stopping smoking are possible.

How to Quit Smoking

It may be bit hard to quit smoking. It is hard because nicotine is a very addictive drug. Before you quit smoking, try the following:

• Cut out a few of your favorite cigarettes during the day.
• For 3 to 5 days, use a notebook to keep track of when you smoke each cigarette.
• Prepare Mentally
• Learn new skills and behaviors and substitute habits like chewing gum, drinking fruit juice
• Get medication and use it correctly i.e. Ask your doctor about using some form of nicotine replacement therapy.

By Jack Peter

What you do is not important. How you do, what you do, is important. The same rule is applicable to smoking also. There are many quit smoking programs available. Take any book on how to quit smoking and you get a number of tips on quitting smoking.

But your nicotine addiction knows them all. It knows that such tips are only the tip of the iceberg. Nicotine is like that mighty mass of ice below the ocean which you can not see with the naked eye. The challenge of nicotine is formidable. Yet, you can beat it and own the tile of ‘former smoker’.

For your benefit, some of the tips are given below:

Your will power gets the top priority. The fact is proved that nicotine addiction is 80 % psychological and 20 % physiological which means, your determination gets the first vote. If you doubt your own ability, how can you succeed? So, your decision to beat back the cravings needs to be strong and a determined one.

“An idle mind is devil’s workshop.” Isn’t it? When you sit idle, you feel like lighting up a cigarette. Take time for sports and physical activity. During physical activity, your blood will circulate more and the impurities in it are likely to find an outlet in the form of sweat. You breathe deeply when you exercise, which is good for the body.

Be away from the area of cigarette influence like smoking friends, smoking joints, clubs, parties and alike. If you are halfway through your quit smoking program, you need to be very strict in this regard. This is the transition period. Any latitude will work to your disadvantage. Plan your leisure time very well.

Whenever you feel like lighting a cigarette, do something else. Eat a biscuit or a sandwich. Drink some water. You can go on drinking water in small quantities throughout the day. This will help you a lot.

Advertise about your quit smoking program in an extensive manner. Let your friends know about it. Let them understand your aim. Tell them, that you are taking this step as per medical advise.

Your will power is your strongest point. Many a times, you quit smoking and restart the habit, but this time, you must win. Yes, it is your will power which is guiding you. Let your determination be more and more strong. On the physical front, do yoga and meditation. The power of mediation is so strong, all the negative tendencies, including the nicotine knot on you, will loosen.

Make a list of the reasons that have made you take the decision to quit smoking, in which there is bound to be a reference to some of the killing diseases. Read the list again and again. Human life is too precious to squander on the stubs and ash of cigarettes.

Ensure that your frame of mind is positive, positive and positive again!

By: Ashish Jain

Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medical treatment. It involves in stimulating some particles of the human body for deriving specific outputs. Do not be horrified, as acupuncture is done by piercing the skin with thin needles. It is not painful but seems to be relaxing.

All smokers can use acupuncture to stop smoking. If you are a chain smoker and cannot quit the bad habit at all, then acupuncture can be a good option for helping you quit smoking. It can give you really positive results, where other methods to stop smoking have failed. Yes, acupuncture decreases chronic smoking habits.

The Prerequisites

Once you have reached a decision for using acupuncture to stop smoking, you must first and foremost get a licensed acupuncture practitioner. Make sure that you find a practitioner who has a proper medical cultivation and who can better assess the medical treatment required by you.

The process of acupuncture

Acupuncture is usually done on the cartilage of your ears. Do not worry, the procedure is safe, just ensure that the needles are useful ones, that is they should be purified to avoid contamination.

When you go for acupuncture to stop smoking, the acupuncturist will ask you a lot of questions to understand your health, behavior and lifestyle. Open out to the acupuncturist and do not conceal facts concerning any medical complications or any medications that you might be taking presently. It is only then that the acupuncturist will be able to tell you exactly how many acupuncture sessions you will be requiring.

The needles are pricked on the ear, hands and wrist of the smoker. The needles remain pierced on your skin for 30 to 45 minutes and this relaxes you. The result is that the pricked needles lessen the cravings for smoking.

As the needle pricking sessions are going on, the therapist recommends you to undergo herbal treatments. For speeding up the process of acupuncture to stop smoking, you can apply a mixture of wintergreen and clove oil, Sichuan lovage rhizomes and the extracts of evodia fruits in the acupuncture points.

The therapist will give you the up-to-date information about the progress that you are making. Depending on your condition, the acupuncture to stop smoking can go on for a few days or may continue for maybe a couple of weeks.

The after-effects of acupuncture

When you are done with the acupuncture treatment, the cigarettes seem to have a foul and nasty burnt taste; you do not feel like smoking. Yes, acupuncture to stop smoking also decreases the side effects of nicotine withdrawal, like cravings, depression and anxiety.

The acupuncture treatment also helps in de-congesting your lungs and improves your blood circulation.

Try acupuncture if you seriously want to quit smoking. Do not let your desire to stop smoking just be another New Year resolution that you intend to break. Trust acupuncture, and free yourself from the addiction of smoking.

By: Roy Dobson

Teens are unaware of the dangers of smoking because they see their elders happily puffing away. Peer pressure is another culprit that leads young people to smoke, but in some cases, smoking is an act of defiance or simply the result of curiosity. If you suspect your teen is into smoking and if your suspicion is correct, be concerned and educate your child on the dangers of smoking.

Smoking and It’s Threat to Life and Limb

Each year, millions of people die from smoking-related diseases. The figure is likely to increase yearly as more young people are taking up the deadly vice. The youngest smoker is a 7-year-old kid who earns his keep scrounging for recyclable scraps.

This scenario is in a third world country and is just the tip of an iceberg. Smoking is eating away young lives but earning governments billions of dollars in tax revenues. So the issue remains unresolved, similar to the early dire global warming predictions, which many choose to ignore.

Several cancers are results of years of smoking and young people are at a higher risk because of their early and prolonged exposure to the poison. But quitting smoking is just as difficult as quitting heroin. Support groups are available to help people get out of the rat hole and start living healthier lives. But it is easier said than done. Smoking is not illegal and minors caught smoking are not penalized. Therefore, the vicious cycle continues. If you are parent with teens who smoke, you should be concerned and take immediate action to help your teens quit the addictive habit.

Helping Teens Quit Smoking

A distraught mom reported that her son and daughter were caught smoking in their rooms. The telltale odor of cigarette smoke gave away the secret. Empty cigarette packs and cigarette butts were uncovered in the trash bin. Alarmed, she reported the incident to her husband, also a non-smoker and together they educated their children on the dangers of smoking, enlisting them in a rehabilitation and support program to help wean their children from smoking.

If you can’t catch your children smoking at home, try to find out who they hang out with and where they spend time after school. Somehow, someone will be able to tell you if your teen’s friends are into smoking for the fun of it.

Telling your son or daughter not to go with their smoking friends will not yield any promising result. Instead, invite their friends over and show them YouTube videos on the irreversible effects of smoking on the body. Give them books on the effect of smoking or invite a doctor to your children’s school or to a homeowners’ association meeting to discuss the perils of smoking. Organize parents and ask the school’s administration and faculty to wage war on smoking. There shouldn’t be smoking and non-smoking areas in schools. Instead, smoking should be banned outright. Amid protests, you can always make it clear that sometimes parents and teachers have to be cruel in order to be kind. Smoking is deadly and there is no other euphemism for it.

Be unswerving in your efforts to wage war against teen smoking. Smoking teens will be smoking adults and will suffer the consequences in the future. Instead of waiting for disaster to strike, start the campaign now. If you love your teens, put your foot down. They’ll thank you for your sustained efforts to help them get rid of a deadly and costly habit.

By: Bradlley Mckoy

Smoking kills! What more damaging effect do you want? A majority of smokers will frankly admit that they wish to give up smoking and somewhere in the past they had given up. But there is also a stubborn tribe of smokers who are not at all willing to admit the harmful effects of smoking!

Enter a conversation:

Sir Winston Churchill (the late former Prime Minister of Great Britain) was a chain smoker of cigars, lived up to the age of 85 years!

‘If he had not smoked, he would have lived up to 120 years,’ said the anti-smoking lobby. ‘What is the use of his living up to that age?’ said the smoking lobby! Die hard habits! Die hard arguments!

Who gains from your smoking, except the Finance Minister? In every budget, he tries to crush you, and the smoker is just not bothered! He cries for a while, only to forget everything soon. The smokers as well as the industry thrive!

Statistically speaking, it is scientifically proven that tobacco smoke contains over 4000 poisonous chemicals. The number and varieties of cancer it generates is in hundreds. Smoking damages practically every part of the human body, and heart takes the maximum pounding! Want proof? Count the number of ever-increasing cancer hospitals. Treating cancer has become a large-scale industry!

Just five decades ago, heart attacks used to be a rare phenomenon! The mixture of nicotine and carbon dioxide increases the rate of blood pressure and strains all parts of the body, the heart to be specific. How long can the heart tolerate this unbearable pressure? And one day, when it says that ‘enough is enough’, the well-wishers of that human being, summon the ambulance and take him to the most unwanted place— the hospital!

To some hard-smokers, living death awaits at the far end of life! Smoking initially reduces and at a later stage cuts off oxygen supply to hands and limbs and the smokers will have to live through the agony of their limbs amputated!

The long puffs that a smoker takes and the attractive, designer coils that he sends in the air, may look attractive, but what about self-inflicted damage is his action leading to? Tar in the cigarette coats your lungs like soot in a chimney and sends a cordial invitation to cancer! You drag the puff deeper into your lungs for the joy and adventure of it, and the rotting process of the heart starts!

Smoking is a slow way to die, there is no other alternative or option. It is a well known fact that heart diseases and strokes are very common among the smokers. The contribution of smoking to heart attacks is maximum! To lung cancers too!

Are you happy or sorry? A foundation stone is being laid for a new cancer hospital!

By: Ashish Jain

Congratulations on your decision to stop smoking. Identifying your smoking triggers (reasons that cause you to crave a cigarette) will help you out when you are experiencing the toughest times. Always remember that your strongest cravings will only last a few minutes. Getting through these few minutes is vital to your success at becoming an ex-smoker. These 2 tips will help you get through them. Note: Utilizing the tips below will probably not be enough for you to stop smoking. They are intended to be used in conjunction with a proven stop smoking plan.

Identify Your Triggers

Cigarette cravings come from two sources, physical and psychological withdrawal. Physical withdrawal happens when your brain realizes that your body does not have nicotine in its system. Seeking equilibrium, your body sends you a craving so you will give it the nicotine that it thinks it needs. Psychological withdrawal is basically your body trying to act on a habit it has developed over the years. The act of smoking the cigarette and gaining pleasure from it (in many different ways) has ingrained itself into your everyday life.

The first step in handling these cravings is identifying what kind of craving it is, physical or psychological. It’s important to realize which type of craving you are having because once you do; you can handle it much better.

If it is a physical craving, think about the actual process that is happening. Your body is simply trying to seek equilibrium. Knowing that this equilibrium could be slowly killing you, you can take a deep breath and realize that you are doing something that is good for your body, not bad. I can tell you first hand that merely knowing what is happening inside your body will ease your craving. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and think about it. The craving will soon pass.

If it is a psychological craving then you must quickly identify the trigger that is causing the craving. Is it boredom, anger, routine or something else? Once you realize the cause of the trigger then you will be able to act upon it by using an alternative to that specific trigger. Chances are, once you have thought about the craving, identified it as a psychological craving and then acted with an alternative action, the craving will almost be gone already! As the days go by, your cravings will become shorter, less strong and farther apart.

Find Alternatives to Triggers

As you become better at identifying your psychological smoking triggers, you will quickly be able to see those triggers coming. Realizing that a trigger is about to happen will greatly increase your chances for success. So what do you do when a trigger hits? You act on it. Instead of giving in and lighting up, you should have a pre-planned alternative to the trigger that is happening, or that is about to happen.

Sit down with a pencil and paper and list as many smoking triggers as you can think of. Skip a line between each trigger. Here is a short list that will help you get started:

• Driving your car
• After a meal
• After an argument
• During a break at work
• When you are bored
• When you are anxious

Now that you have written down all of your triggers, go back to the beginning of your list and think of at least two alternatives to each trigger. For instance, when driving in your car and you get a craving, you can turn up the CD player and sing loudly, play the drums on your steering wheel, chew 2-3 pieces of gum or call a support buddy on the cell phone.

Once you have completed your trigger/alternative list, carry it with you at all times. Any time you realize a trigger that you don’t have in your list, write it down and come up with alternatives for it. If you are having difficulty finding an alternative, you can find hundreds of them online by doing a web search on your favorite search engine.

Tying it All Together

Now that you have a (very) basic understanding about what causes cravings when you try to stop smoking, you will have an easier time with them. Just knowing this information will allow you to endure the cravings a little bit longer. Physical cravings will subside in a matter or days, usually 3-4 days. Psychological cravings, however will last much longer. Some people experience psychological craving for months. Although they are not as strong as physical cravings, they can easily get you smoking again even months after you have smoked your last cigarette.

This is why most people stop smoking successfully only to start smoking again weeks or months later. The physical addiction was broken. It was the psychological addiction that did them in. For this reason, you must identify and act upon your smoking triggers for the rest of your life. It is important to know that you must never take even one puff on a cigarette for the rest of your life, not one. The very next puff you take will have you completely addicted again, both physically and psychologically.

By: Allen Jones