A Look At Second Hand Smoke

Cigarette smoke contains harmful chemicals such as formaldehyde, benzene, cadmium, and arsenic. There are no levels of second hand smoke that are considered safe, and studies show that exposure to cigarette smoke causes premature death and disease in those who breathe second hand smoke.

Adolescents who are exposed to second hand smoke are more likely to begin smoking themselves. It has been estimated that as many as 100,000 start smoking every day. (www) Nearly half of those children will continue to smoke for at least 15 to 20 years.

Still need a reason to stop smoking?

A Look At The Smoker’s Body

The effects of cigarette smoking on the body are shocking. A smoker has a significantly increased risk of heart disease, lung disease, cancers and other debilitating diseases.

Some common ailments experienced by smokers are: cough, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema, asthma, colds, flu, copd, plaque and hardening of the coronary arteries, high heart rate and blood pressure, stroke, abdominal aortic aneurysm, heart attack, peripheral vascular disease, osteoporosis, stomach ulcers, decreased sense of taste and smell, graves disease, thyroid disorders, macular degeneration, gingivitis, painful menstruation, early menopause, infertility, impotence and wrinkles.

Do you need another reason to stop smoking? Take a look at the effects of smoking during pregnancy.

Pregnancy And The Smoking Mother

Pregnant women are encouraged to stop smoking even before conception. The toxins in cigarette smoke can contribute to infertility and ectopic pregnancies. After becoming pregnant, the harmful effects of smoking are passed on to the fetus and may result in birth defects, lower birth weight and premature delivery of the infant.

Smoking also increases the risk of complications during the pregnancy like placenta previa, premature rupture of membranes and abruptia placentae. The infant will also be born with a n addiction to nicotine which will lead to withdrawal symptoms after delivery and a very cranky infant.

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in America and contributes to one third of the heart disease present in our population. Finding a reason to stop smoking is not difficult but actually quitting is easier said than done. Once you have established a reason to quit smoking, get some help. You are not alone in your quest for a healthier lifestyle.

The Stop Smoking Herbs – A Natural Choice

Most of the products, which aid quitting smoking are actually offering nicotine to the body, though in a much lesser quantity than cigarettes. This works on the principle of ‘send a thief to catch a thief’. However, when you use the stop smoking herbs, you are assured that you have stopped taking nicotine in any form possible, since the herbs in question do not contain nicotine but imitate their effects. Some of these stop smoking herbs are described below. I hope that it will inspire you to choose one, so you could stop smoking today itself.

1. The lobelia plant – This plant will give you lobeline to replace your nicotine with and this is not addictive at all. As soon as you want to quit smoking, use this stop smoking herb and keep taking it, until you find that your craving for a cigarette can be fought without any external aids. Consult your doctor for dosage however, as this herb can be pretty strong and can cause some serious health problem if taken in overdose.

Lobelia is also known as the Indian tobacco. The great thing about this stop smoking herb is that you can make actual cigarettes out of it and smoke it, without having any of the dangerous effects that cigarettes present you with and hence, help you get better. Used on a regular basis, it gets you rid of your smoking habit in no time, provided you want to stay away from cigarettes.

Medically speaking, this herb was and is still is used for ailments such as asthma, pleurisy, bronchitis, and whooping cough among others, which are all acute lung diseases. It is also used as an active expectorant, mild anti-depressant and relaxant.

2. Mimosa hostilis or the touch-me-not plant – this is the plant that moves away from your touch; it is very common in Northeast of Brazil as well as in Mexico. The Mimosa tea is a well-known antidote to the worst of worst withdrawal symptoms that follow the quit smoking decision. This stop smoking herbs is not addictive and hence, it helps you detach yourself from the dependency you have on the cigarettes and the nicotine contained therein.

Smokers determined to quit should investigate all of the aids to stop smoking so they can break this addiction and kick this habit. First of all, there are help lines with toll free numbers set up to counsel smokers. These help lines are staffed by professional people who are available to provide advice to smokers. The people giving advice to smokers on the help lines have quality information on all of the aids to stop smoking. They know how these aids to stop smoking work, and they know which ones are most effective. The people on the help lines also know where the aids to stop smoking are available.

Aids to Stop Smoking Come in Several Varieties

One of the aids to stop smoking is a series of patches that help to overcome the addiction to nicotine. These patches are placed on the skin, and they transmit a measured dose of nicotine to the user of the patch that replaces the nicotine once obtained from cigarettes. Some smokers have had success with these aids, and they have quit smoking. Other smokers have failed to quit using the patches. Other methods of nicotine replacement therapy include lozenges and gum. These aids to stop smoking have also had mixed results for people.

Some smokers have turned to hypnotherapy to quit smoking. These smokers have worked with a trained hypnotist to try to overcome the habit and addiction to nicotine. Some hypnotists help their clients with techniques to hypnotize themselves if they need further support to quit smoking. Acupuncture has also been used by smokers to kick their habit and overcome their addiction to nicotine from cigarettes. This treatment is based on principles developed hundreds of years ago, and some people have successfully quit smoking by working with a professional acupuncturist. There are ways to quit smoking, and all smokers should explore the possibilities in order to overcome this habit and addiction.

Using this stop smoking shot has helped hundreds of smokers to quit smoking and using it would provide smokers with a way to permanently do away with the desire to smoke, and it helps overcome the brainwashing that smokers are bombarded with through heavy doses of cigarette advertising.

With millions of dollars being spent on cigarette advertising, smokers are made to believe that smoking actually helps to soothe, satisfy as well as relax smokers. However, a stop smoking shot taken over a period of time should soon help dispel such false notions and help one recover to normalcy all over again.

Mimics The Properties Of Nicotine

The stop smoking shot will mimic the properties of nicotine and be effective in fooling the brain into thinking that it is getting more nicotine while actually the nicotine is being flushed out of the system. After the stop smoking shot, your next cigarette will taste awful and you may actually feel sick in the stomach, especially if you try to cheat while taking the shot, and thus it will help to keep you on track to stop smoking.

There will also be a psychological de-addiction that will result in a more confident person who need not depend on the hand-to-mouth dependency on cigarettes. Other benefits of the stop smoking shot are that it provides respiratory support that will help to rebuild the strong as well as healthy lungs and also detoxify the immune system.

Lighting up a cigarette will reduce precious minutes from the smoker’s life and time will slowly run out on them if they don’t heed the warnings and make an earnest effort to quit smoking. Taking a stop smoking shot is a step in the right direction. There is really no sense in risking the chance of cancerous diseases, heart diseases, strokes, emphysema, high blood pressure as well as clogged arteries. Thanks to the stop smoking shot, no longer will the smoker be inhaling the four thousand harmful chemicals contained in cigarettes.

How Acupuncture Works

The use of acupuncture to stop smoking works by helping to reduce the smoker’s physical cravings for tobacco. It also works by lessening the withdrawal symptoms of smoking by releasing a sedative effect on the nervous system. Beta-endorphin, being a natural hormone in the body which causes physical relaxation as well reducing the sensitivity to pain, is also released during the treatment. This particular hormone (beta-endorphin) is part of the physical mechanism which makes it possible for smokers to quit – and quit for good.

What Happens During Acupuncture Treatment

Using acupuncture to stop smoking requires a number of treatments for it to fully work. Acupunctural treatments usually last on average for about 30 minutes and work by inserting needles into particular points on the body including the ear, hand and wrists to release a calming and healing effect on the body. Sometimes a mild electrical current is passed through these needles to augment the effect. “Ear-tags” (being very small retainer needles) are also inserted into the ear to remain there for a few days in order to exert a constant stimulus to special points so help reduce the smoker’s withdrawal symptoms.

The number of treatments required depends greatly on the practitioner as well as the extent of the smoker’s habit. However, a typical acupunctural program will consist of around 3 treatments in the first week, with 2 treatments following these up in the second week. To promote long-term quitting, the occasional follow-up treatments are usually recommended over the following 2-3 months of the initial treatment.

The Pros Of Using Acupuncture

One of the pros of using acupuncture to stop smoking is that clients tend to find weight-gain less likely to be a side-effect normally associated with the quitting of smoking as the acupunctural points used treat the craving for nicotine tend to also reduce the craving for food. As well as this, acupuncture can also be used as a treatment for other disorders and illnesses such as addiction to drugs (legal or illegal), chronic pain, injuries, chronic fatigue, headaches, depression, stress disorders, insomnia, allergies and many others. Although it may not work for everyone, as much of the result of the quitting of smoking lies with the smoker themselves, using acupuncture to stop smoking may be the answer for some as it can certainly be a huge support and asset for those who want to give it their best shot.

Get Information

One great thing about reading a forum to stop smoking is that there will be plenty of information from others about what they did or are doing to quit. You’ll read about methods to quit, alternative therapies, and so on. If you’re not looking forward to the prospect of quitting cigarettes cold turkey, information on how to stop smoking in the forum will be valuable to you. Chances are there will be a few posts in the forum that are kept at the very top of the message list with a lot of information that people new to quitting will want to know.

It’s A Social Thing

The big benefit to attempting to get help from an online forum to stop smoking is that you’re sharing the same experience with people that have quit or are in the process of quitting. To help that process along, it’s a great idea to introduce yourself if you do join a forum to stop smoking and talk about your plan. While just reading the forum can give you information, by turning it into a social experience, you will make it harder to quit. The other side of that is you get to encourage others as well, so even if you’ve got headaches from withdrawal, you can get a good feeling from seeing others encouraged by you.

While it’s easy to relapse and pick up a cigarette again if you’re facing the withdrawal symptoms alone, it’s a lot harder to post each day about your progress and then go to have a smoke. And if you do relapse, talking about it on a forum to stop smoking is more likely to get you encouragement to attempt to keep trying to quit than you would get on your own. People are social creatures, so by turning to a forum as another tool in your efforts to stop smoking, you’ll be improving your chances of success.

More About the Laser Stop Smoking Method

Laser beams have been used for a number of years now, and this is often described as biostimulation of energy meridian points associated with the desire to smoke, and it is considered as being similar to that of acupuncture meridian points, but with the soft laser there is no pain or heat involved, and it is instead entirely painless.

As well, with the laser stop smoking method, there are certain things that you are going to have to keep in mind. For instance, before you quit smoking using this method, you want to: select a date to stop smoking and stick to it; tell everyone that you are going to quit smoking; do not carry cigarettes with you, make them inconvenient to get to; deep clean your house and car; make friends with an ex-smoker; eat more fruits and vegetables; get more exercise; sit in non-smoking areas; and make a list of all the reasons why you want to quit smoking.

All of these pointers will help you immensely, and even if you start off by only doing one or two of these things, you will still be able to immediately notice the difference in regards to how easy or hard quitting smoking is on you.

This is one of the lesser known methods of quitting smoking, however it is extremely successful, and so if you are one of the many people out there right now that are trying to quit smoking, then you should absolutely look more into this option and see if it is something that you are interested in.

Remember to speak to your doctor about this first however, just to make sure that you are a good candidate and so that you thus will not be putting yourself at risk for harm or injury. This will only take a single appointment and will obviously be well worth it in the end.

Get Ready, Find Support And Encouragement, And More

The first stop smoking tip would be for the smoker to get ready to quit and set a date by which to quit smoking. A change in environment would be helpful, and in this regard, it is necessary to get rid of all cigarettes as well as ashtrays in the home, car, as well as place of work. The smoker should also discourage others from smoking around him or her. Once one has succeeded in quitting smoking, he or she should never ever take another puff.

The second stop smoking tip is to get support as well as encouragement from friends, family, co-workers as well as health care providers. According to studies conducted on this aspect of quitting smoking, it has been found that a person has a better chance of quitting smoking if he or she gets support from others as well as takes individual, group or telephone counseling.

The third stop smoking tip is to learn new skills as well as behaviors and try to distract the self from urges to smoke. In this regard, going for walks, or talking to someone or being busy with different tasks and a change in routine would certainly help to quit smoking. Substituting coffee with tea and eating breakfast in different places would also help, and so will doing other things to reduce stress.

The fourth stop smoking tip is to get medication and use it in the proper manner. Medications will help to stop smoking and will lessen the urge to smoke in smokers, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given its nod to seven medications that help to stop smoking. One can also seek and obtain advice from a health care provider and carefully read the information contained on the different medications. The chances are that these medications can double the success rate when it comes to quitting smoking.

The fifth stop smoking tip one can try is being prepared for relapses as well as other difficulties. A relapse will usually occur within three months immediately after quitting, and one should not be discouraged if one begins to start smoking again. It may take several attempts before one can finally quit smoking, and one should take care to avoid alcohol consumption, not hang around with other smokers, expect to gain weight, and suffer bad moods as well as depression.

Following these five simple stop smoking tips should help in kicking the habit and resuming living a healthy and trouble free life again.

Short Term Benefits

A lot of the most noticeable benefits come in the first year after you commit to stop smoking, and some will even be noticeable after hours or days. Within the first 24 hours after you quit smoking, you’ll find that your heart rate and blood pressure, as well as carbon monoxide levels in your blood, will drop. If you have a problem with high blood pressure, it’s hard to beat an immediate benefit like that!

Over the next few months, you’ll find that a lot of damaged systems in the body will start functioning better than before. Your smell and taste will return, which makes eating more pleasurable, and your lungs will be able to work better, both for taking in air and in keeping those lungs clean of harmful materials, which in turn will mean less infections. This is because once you commit to stop smoking, tiny little hairs in your lungs called cilia, which catch dust and other foreign materials, start to work like they’re supposed to.

Long Term Benefits

The big, lifesaving benefits that come when you commit to stop smoking are not as noticeable, since they prevent major health problems, but they have been well documented. In the years after you stop smoking, you will benefit from a reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease, most dramatic after the first year and over a period of more than a decade, steadily declining. You will also have a reduced chance of suffering a stroke and of several kinds of cancer. And while being able to smell your food better is a great benefit of not smoking, reducing the chance of suffering from deadly diseases is a more poignant reason to quit. So commit to stop smoking today and enjoy both the benefits that will come to you soon and the ones that will improve your life for years to come.

Nicotine Gum

Nicotine gum is a treatment to stop smoking that’s available over the counter, and is just as it sounds, little pieces of gum you chew to deliver a small amount of nicotine to your system. In general, you are instructed to chew for a little while, then hold the wad of gum between your cheek and tongue in order to let the nicotine get into your system. The benefits to this treatment to stop smoking is that you’re satisfying the oral craving that so many cigarette users also suffer from, while you reduce the tobacco in the system. With this any many of the alternative treatments to quit smoking, this will also get you started on letting your lungs heal from all the smoke inhalation you’ve treated yourself to.

The Patch

The nicotine patch is another relatively new way to stop smoking, and can be very effective when used properly. It consists of a small adhesive patch, usually attached to the arm, that delivers a small but constant amount of nicotine to your system. While this doesn’t satisfy oral cravings, it does work consistently throughout the day, and as you wean yourself off nicotine, you can use smaller and smaller patches. There have been doubts as to how well the patch works, but if all other methods have failed, this might be the treatment to stop smoking you need.

Prescription Medication

When nothing seems to work, prescription medicine might be the treatment to stop smoking you need. Drugs like Chantix stimulate nicotine receptors in the body, which fools the body into thinking that it’s been given its fix. Chantix in particular is a new drug, recently released for sale in the United States. Other drugs, like Wellbutrin, reduce nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Alone or combined with nicotine gum or the patch, smokers often kick the habit with greatly reduced symptoms. But any of these three methods can help you kick the habit without the severity of withdrawal that cold turkey promises, so discuss these options with your doctor and commit to improving your health.