Breathe Happy

For those of you who really want to quit and have tried other things like the patches, lozenges, gum, and even going cold turkey, here’s a new option for you. It’s an inhaler that you can use much like one for asthma. You can change the filter as much as you like. A lot of people are using the accompanying filters longer and longer, gradually getting less nicotine when they inhale, and at some point just throwing them away. Read more

I smoked for five years and I quit smoking about two years ago. I wasn’t a heavy smoker because I usually smoked about ten cigarettes a day and only when I had stressful meetings.  Quitting, nonetheless, isn’t easy.

How did I quit smoking? Read more

One of the ways in which  the tobacco industry is so unethical, is that cigarettes are still tested on animals.

Even after all this time, despite everyone knowing for years about all of the health problems that cigarettes cause in humans, the tobacco industry continues to engage in this gross behavior. The dangers of smoking have been known for decades now, and tests on animals are very inconclusive (bad science) in any case. One way in which the tests are invalid, is that humans smoke voluntarily and so inhale deeper than animals who are forcibly exposed to the smoke. Clearly, the results will be skewed. Another factor here is that the upper respiratory tracts of animals (such as dogs and rats), are physiologically quite different from those of humans. The nature of the human respiratory tract is one of the factors which keeps animals from contracting lung cancer in the way that humans do.

The earliest animal smoking experiments in the 1950s and 1960s, were performed on beagle dogs who were strapped down and fitted with face masks. The masks forced them to inhale cigarette smoke for several hours at a time. In other tests, these dogs were also made to smoke by having their throats slit and smoke pumped into the tracheotomy. They have additionally had their legs severed whilst they were still alive to test the effects of smoke on circulation and also have had their chest cavities opened up so that their coronary arteries could be artificially manipulated. There have even been tests where researchers have inserted electrodes into dog's penises to measure the effect of smoking on sexual performance! (There is plenty of evidence in humans already, on how cigarette use causes erectile dysfunction!)

One small blessing is that at least smoking tests have been banned on animals in the UK since 1997. Sadly, they still go on in many other countries, such as in Europe and in the USA. For example, in the USA the tobacco giant Philip Morris has been spending millions each year in funding these cruel and pointless tests on animals such as beagles, monkeys, rats, and mice. Lab rats are forced into tiny cone-shaped canisters which are pumped full of smoke, so that they have no choice but to inhale it. The rats are then killed and dissected to examine the damage caused to their bodies. In other tests, mice and rats have tobacco tar applied directly to bare skin to induce cancerous tumours (despite how that seems relevant to humans, who take smoke in through their lungs).

Recently Philip Morris has deemed it necessary to add new ingredients to their existing cigarettes, such as sugar, honey, plum juice, cocoa, and coffee extracts, and to test these modifications on animals. Commenting on a recent research project in which around 1000 rats were forced to inhale cigarette smoke for about six hours per day over a 90-day period, a Philip Morris spokesman said the company’s "rare” use of animal tests was to help them develop lower-risk tobacco products, or to make sure that modifications to brands did not add to the toxicity of their existing cigarettes.

"This research was not to confirm the quality of the cigarette or to see if it was safe. There is no such thing as a safe cigarette," the spokesman added. So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth!

Maybe this will help smokers who are trying to quit, knowing that these atrocities are being inflicted so unnecessarily on other creatures.  When you feel your resolve wavering, think on this– you are not just killing and harming yourself and other humans, you are also paying the tobacco companies to kill and mutilate all of these other innocent creatures.

It's just another very powerful reason to quit, I think you will agree.

Picture courtesy of www.globalphilosophy.blogspot.com

If you are trying to quit smoking, there are a few things that Dr. John M. Grohol, PSYD, has to say that may shock you.

So you're trying to quick. Have you picked up a book about it? Although they are a good first step (after all, you are admitting you have a problem and are seeking help to quit your habit)  the truth is not always detailed properly, and is sometimes even hidden in these books. Yes, these books are often the purveyors of white lies.

Even though psychologists agree that certain mental health illnesses don’t require treatment –- such as behavioral disorders (like phobias), some do need assistance in order to be properly eliminated. Smoking isn’t one of them.

First, Dr. Grohol says that if you know that your smoking is behavior-related, (meaning you smoke along with something else, like drinking a beer or right after eating), you cannot quit smoking using something like patches or nicotine gum. The association you built up between the two is stronger than what any form of alternative treatment can do for you.

And unfortunately, science has never really delved much into the matter. Why? Because science doesn’t work that way. What the scientific community (and funders) want, is to prove that a certain medication or assistance device works. But most people who quit didn’t do it using a patch or gum. They do it on their own, often cold turkey.

In fact, it's believed that this cold turkey group composes around 75% of the smokers who manage to quit. Shocking? Not really. They just knew what to do and and they did it.

Monitoring themselves for depressive feelings and/or urges toward the habit has worked better for many smokers, than using books or other aids.

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We know that most smokers want to quit. Ii’s nothing new. The same goes for other bad habits. But why is it so difficult to do? Why do people hurt themselves, at times their own friendships, and other relationships, for the sake of addictive and damaging chemical substances?

The truth is, bad habits are hard to break. Okay, so I’m preaching to the choir. But why are they so much work to get rid of? First, we need to understand how we create them. Exchanging them for healthy habits is what we need.

Repetition is typically the way habits are built. We don’t need to get a reward to create routine toward our other daily habits, such as showering or brushing our teeth. However, the bad habits often require an incentive to break them. Why else would we want to?

Remember hearing the word ‘dopamine’ in biology classes in high school? Remember how your health ed teacher used to say that this is why we get hooked on drugs? It’s the same thing for any pleasurable habit, which makes the bad ones hard to get rid of. Dopamine is a naturally addictive substance that our body makes to tell us that what we are doing is fun, and when the feeling stops, our body starts asking for it again, up to the point of craving it. This is why we sometimes crave something, like drugs or food, even if the feeling of hunger or the initial buzz is no longer there.

The most common cure for this sort of dependance, called cravings, is simple. It's called willpower. Yes, this is the main ingredient in your how-to-quit recipe. And, for those who have already tried to quit smoking and lacked this essential part, hope is not lost.

You see, this is a part of our inbred mechanism that needs exercise. If you feel like you currently lack willpower, start small. Self-control, like any other aspect of human psychology, is good only if it’s trained. We all have it–some of us just need to develop it, the same way we can develop self-esteem and courage.

The trick is to start small. If smoking is still much to large task to take on, try reducing the number of cookies you eat after every dinner. Work on that for a few days. Then add to it: get five minutes more exercise tomorrow; eat more vegetables the day after; smoke one cigarette less per day.

Now, some people suggest that you break your nasty habits by trying to replace them with something else. This can work for some people, but psychologists warn to stay away from any nasty habits, such as replacing smoking with sucking on a lollipop. The reason is simple: now you have another bad habit that you need to break. Instead, why not immediately replace it with something healthy, thus avoiding the need to repeat another entire process of reducing your dependancies? Instead of reaching for a candy, pick up a celery stick. Go for a long walk outside, away from any smokers (especially those you know well).

And one more tip: stay away from anyone who tried to tempt you back in, at least for the time it takes you to officially quit and feel like you are over your bad habit. You need twice the resolve to fight against both those individuals, and the tricks your own mind tries to play on you. You might as well not let yourself get sucked in by someone who does not have the same level of will power you do.

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