The Effects Of Smoking & The Easy Way to Kick The Habit

Smoking is a harmful and addictive habit that affects millions of people around the globe. We now know the dangers of cigarette smoking and smokers are urged to find ways to stop smoking for their own health. This is not an easy task, as smokers start at an extremely young age. The average age at which many people begin to smoke is thirteen years old.



A habit formed at such an early age is not easily broken. Nicotine affects many parts of the body and it is hard to pull free without some assistance. There are many different diseases which can be caused by smoking. Most smokers need assistance to quit smoking and many different methods exist for this very purpose.



There are many different reasons why people start smoking and develop an addiction to cigarettes. The main reason that people try smoking is peer pressure. Some young people think smoking will make them appear more mature, and be popular with their peers. It also is forbidden which makes it all the more alluring to teenagers, thus 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 in movies or on television can lead someone to think that smoking is acceptable behavior. 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 smoking.



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 matter of just eight seconds. Once in your brain, nicotine affects your blood pressure and heart rate. Over time it can increase your bad cholesterol and cause the narrowing of your arteries. Nicotine in concentrated doses is a lethal poison, so you can imagine the effects on your body. Nicotine is also addictive and one of the reasons many cannot quit smoking.



Smoking can affect your health on many different levels. Getting winded playing a game is one side effect of smoking. More serious smoking related diseases include emphysema and cancer. Strokes and heart disease are also closely linked to cigarette smoking. A person who quits smoking will greatly reduce their chances for these diseases for every year they can go smoke free.



The outcome of these medical conditions caused by smoking is grim. Lung cancer is nearly always fatal unless caught very early and a full 80% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Lung and heart disease can take years from your life unless you are able to quit smoking. Emphysema cannot be cured but only managed, plus the damage to your lungs cannot be repaired. The benefits of quitting smoking include a longer, healthier life and a better quality of life.



There are many 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 you slowly withdraw 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 choose this option. Other frequently used methods to quit smoking include an herbal kit that can guide you through quitting. It has a success rate similar to that of nicotine gums and patches.



Hypnosis is a very popular and highly successful option for those who want to quit smoking without weight gain or withdrawal. Hypnotherapy has a high success rate with smokers who are trying to quit smoking. Hypnosis might sound like an extreme solution but it delivers solid results up to 70% of the time. This success rate is many times that of other methods.



The reason hypnotherapy is so effective is that it while the addiction to nicotine makes up only about 10% of the smoking addiction, the emotional and mental aspects of the habit make up about 90% of the cigarette smoking addiction. Hypnosis treats this aspect of the addiction.



In addition, 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by stress, and hypnotherapy has proven to be a powerful tool that can help reprogram the mind to divert it from stressful thoughts, and towards more positive and relaxing thoughts. In addition, the practice of hypnotherapy incorporates a state of deep relaxation.



And about 45% of the smoking behavior is prompted by conditioned responses. This is where smoking is associated with other situations 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. Every time you watch TV, your unconscious flashes an image of the cigarette in your hand, and you feel the compulsion to smoke.



Hypnosis therapy is routinely used to "extinguish" the conditioned responses by disassociating the unconscious links between cigarettes and TV, driving, coffee, working on your computer, or any other environment where an unconscious association has been created.



In summary: Although most smokers think that their inability to quit smoking is based on their addiction to nicotine, in truth it's the psychological aspects of a smoking habit that present the largest barriers. Hypnotherapy was accepted by the American Medical Association in 1958 as an effective tool for quitting smoking. And hypnosis for smoke cessation is the second most common use of hypnotherapy today.



While hourly rates for hypnotherapists continue to skyrocket, there are excellent hypnosis CDs on the market that can greatly reduce its cost. Since everyone is different, 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 obtain the best possible outcome. In any case, the fee for the best self hypnosis programs equates to much less than the amount that an average smoker wastes each and every month on buying cigarettes.