Posts Tagged ‘Quitting’
Help With Quitting Smoking
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Enhancing the quality and length of your life by quitting smoking is a worthwhile effort. It is definitely not an easy task, but it can be accomplished with time and patience. To quit smoking successfully, finding out what your options are. Knowing where to go for help is a wise first step. Quitting smoking is the best move that you can make for your health and the health of all of those around you. Just about everyone knows by now that smoking causes diseases that shorten your life or those that may even end it. Diseases such as lung cancer, throat, esophagus, bladder, and kidney, and pancreas cancers are some horrible things caused by smoking for a start. Not to mention some leukemia, stomach, and cervix cancers, and newly added by the Surgeon General is pneumonia. People who smoke are more than three times as likely to die due to heart attack as non smokers. Smoking is a major risk factor for a disease that narrow the blood vessels that transport blood to the limbs and muscles called peripheral vascular disease as well as the disease that causes some strokes.
If that‘s not enough to convince you to stop smoking, let’s look at your appearance. Premature wrinkling of skin, chronic bad breath, discolored fingernails and hair, and an increase risk of macular degeneration a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Smoking over the age of thirty-five if you are a woman can put you in a high risk group for stroke, heart attack, and blood clots of the legs, low birth weight of babies and miscarriages. But the hopeful portion of this message is that if you decide to quite regardless of how long you’ve smoked or how much, quitting will help you to live longer. In as little as twenty minutes after quitting smoking the heart rate and blood pressure drops and in one to nine months following quitting smoking, circulation in your hands extremities and lung function increases. Shortness of breath decreases and your lungs begin to function properly, cleaning the lungs and removing mucus that causes infection. Fifteen years of non smoking and your risk of heart disease is that of non smoking persons. These benefits can be obtained from quitting smoking even if you are suffering from a smoking related illness already. Smoking is less socially accepted now more than ever. Smoking bans have been placed in just about every workplace in the nation along with airports, public buildings. Even friends may insist that you not smoke in their houses or cars. Some people may even find dating more difficult because of a bad smoking habit. So the social impacts of not smoking will probably change your life for the better if you quit.
If you have a family, that is another great motivation to quit smoking. The main reason is that the secondhand smoke could pose serious health problems for others who do not deserve such things. You should also consider what kind of role model you are being to any small children that you live with, whether they are your own kids, siblings, nieces and nephews, or any other relation. You may be living with kids who look up to you as an authority figure, and if you teach them that smoking is alright you will feel very guilty later in life.
Some of the many new products used to help an individual to stop smoking are really very effective. Counseling services, reading materials, medicines, and patches are all widely available and have produced some amazing results. Educational materials alone may be the best beginning start to an attempt to quit because once you know what kind of damage you are doing to your body the prudent and reasonable person will definitely see that it is the very best thing to do. However, it has been documented and researched that the highest success rates occur when a combination of methods are used simultaneously. Take the time and do it for yourself and your loved ones, quit for life.
Tips to Quitting Smoking and Start Cleansing Your Lungs
If you are a smoker, you may not be interested in learning about how to cleanse your lungs, but you’re the one who needs to hear it the most. When you smoke you are constantly filling your lungs with toxic substances.
So, obviously the best way to have cleaner lungs would be to quit smoking, right? Yes, that’s absolutely the most effective way to have better lungs that allow you to breathe freely and easily. That’ what we all want, and is a good sign of healthy lungs as well.
This article is going to give you some tips that can help you quit smoking, and allow you to clean out your lungs. Just the fact that you’ve smoked in the past is a strong indication that your lungs may be filthy and charred by the smoke you’ve inhaled through them.
Listed below are five tips to aid you in letting go of the smoking habit and giving you the opportunity for a lung cleansing:
The first thing you need to do in order to let go to the habit that’s making your lungs unhealthy is to prepare yourself mentally. Once you prepare your mind for it, that’s half the battle. Think of the times you love to smoke the most and be prepared on what else you can do when that time comes.
Try spending a few days of thinking about smoking. Each time you inhale the smoke from the cigarette, visualize the damage you’re doing to your lungs. Image clean, healthy pink lungs and then imagine charcoal lungs. This can really aid you in what you’re doing to your lungs.
Build up the day of quitting as the most important day of your life. When you’re able to do this, you can equip the significance of it with clean, healthy lungs. By allowing yourself to put a priority on this day, it becomes an extremely important day in you life.
Make your own reasons for quitting. These can be a great guide to allowing you to remind yourself when those urges hit, why exactly you are quitting smoking. You may list, to have healthier lungs or breathe without panting. These are great reasons to quit.
Create some ways to deal with the urges when they hit. Have a strategic plan that is outlined and can allow you to be prepared with ways ahead of time to tackle the urges and lead you to your destination of cleaner lungs
Now, you have some great tips to aid you in quitting smoking, and that’s the first start to detoxifying your lungs. You may be surprised once you begin your journey to stop smoking; it’s not as difficult as you may have thought it would be.
Finally, when you begin to breathe fresh air into your cleaner lungs after stopping smoker, you’ll be able to feel it. You’ll be much more equipped to breathe better and to finally utilize what your healthy lungs are for; better breathing, not bad smoking.
To discover how better lung health can not only make you healthier but can help your body reject smoking making it that much easier to fight your addiction then click below for the ultimate lung detox guide!
3 Tips on Quitting Smoking & Stopping Cravings
Quitting smoking cigarettes can be a trial for many people be it their first attempt to stop smoking, a second time, a third or even more it is never easy. These 3 tips on quitting smoking cigarettes focus not just the everyday things that you need to do to not give in to the cravings but also the big picture to help you get over smoking for good by a change of mindset that is essential to stop smoking.
1. Dealing With Cravings
The first challenge confronted by men and women looking to quit smoking cigarettes is the cravings that hit when the body is demanding nicotine and also the psychological urge to smoke for its comforting action built up over years of smoking. While there are patches, gum and plenty of other aides that can help none of them will stop you smoking for good without the key facet of breaking any addiction which is WILLPOWER!
This does not mean that you just need superhuman willpower to sustain yourself through periods of intense withdrawals and cravings but without the belief that you can and will succeed it makes it all the harder. Apart from this there are some tricks to fighting cravings you can use when they hit which are usually simply ways to distract you until they pass. These cravings do not usually last longer than 10 minutes and are usually only 5 minutes long according to research so when you fee the tell tale withdrawal symptoms try doing one of these things:
Immediately do something, clean up your desk, clean up the house … busy yourself instead of sitting there thinking about the nicotine cravings which only makes it worse.
A mental trick that many use to great effect is to imagine a tennis match in your mind. Sounds silly right but the steady back and forth actually has an effect of calming and applying a steady beat for you to concentrate on … try it!
Exercise, not a full workout but have a 5-10 minute light workout you can do at home or in an office even if you head is pounding or you feel nauseous doing something to get the body’s feel good chemicals pumping will help.
2. Making a Plan
The key to making the foundations of willpower work for you is by having a plan to quit smoking cigarettes for the short term and the long term. It is advised you should even write these down with your goals and aspirations so that they are firm and not changeable like goals you keep in your head that can ‘change’ when things get tough.
If you plan to quit cold turkey, set a date that you will quit and make that date the time you throw out all your smoking paraphernalia like lighters, any remaining cigarettes, tobacco, rollups or whatever! Even dry clean your clothes to get the smoking smell out of them to make a clean break.
If you plan to reduce your smoking over time makes sure you have a daily or weekly plan of how many cigarettes you are allowing yourself to smoke and do not break it! in fact write it down every time you have one and check it before you smoke another. Then every day or week reduce that amount until you have a date where you have no smoking days left and you quit for good!
Goals can only be achieved if we have them set down and monitored or they just become dreams and like dreams can slip away when we wake up.
3. Change of Mindset
Lastly to achieve these tips on quitting smoking you must have the binding that allows you to do accomplish them because you WANT to accomplish them. While you may believe you need to quit smoking now do you want to quit or do you feel regret or longing. Do you feel forced to do this or can you not wait to give up the habit?
This is the question that will ensure long term success and a healthier life as a non smoker rather than a quick foray into that world and a retreat back to smoking and nicotine addiction. You must change your mindset and believe all the great things that come from being smoke free and that when cravings hit you do not see the easy way out by smoking but only see this as a speed bump on your journey because your DESIRE to quit smoking is greater than your desire for instant relief!
If this is your goal and you want to end this unhealthy habit for yourself and your family click below to find out more methods and tips on quitting smoking that have helped thousands of people stop smoking cigarettes to be smoke free, healthy and breathing easy!
Quitting Smoking Is Not As Hard As You Think
Have you ever wanted to quit smoking and convinced yourself than you are destined to smoke cigarettes the rest of your life? Have you ever tried to quit and gave up halfway thought the day or that same night? If you think that quitting smoking is just impossible, I would read on.
It truly is not as hard as you may think. Take it from a true one packer a day smoker or better on some days. It was like a true friend to me that I couldn’t let go. I have smoked a good thirty to thirty six years of my life. I’m not quite sure when I started smoking. I quit one time about ten years ago for a week. The big mistake I made back then was to ask a friend for a smoke so I could see what I was missing. That was a big mistake! I was back full time again and tried several times since and failed on all attempts except the last attempt.
Quitting smoking for me was always like a ritual that I attempted two or three times a year. The excuse was always the cost of cigarettes. Never did I complain about the possible ill effects that it could possibly have down the road. Sure I was aware everyday about how bad it was. I heard it on the news every day on how the smokers were getting the boot in restaurants and buildings. The worst people to smoke around were the non-smokers that quit smoking. I know, my wife quit ten years ago. I smoked outside come rain, snow or blizzard. I hope as a non-smoker I never get like that.
I was not a very pleasant person to be around when I attempted to quit. I’m sure smokers know how short tempered one can get, when one has not had a cigarette for a while. Every morning I attempted to be a non-smoker, I set myself up for failure by having a coffee and shortly after breakfast I ran around outside hoping to bump into someone who smoked. I always had a nic fit around lunch and dinnertime, only to give in to the craving over and over again. I did not last a good part of a day. I just about gave up trying to quit. I was convinced that I was going to smoke the rest of my life. I thought I was hooked for good, until one sunny afternoon around 3:oopm I had my last cigarette while I was washing my jeep.
Everybody tells me that I was ready. I really don’t know if I was ready. What I do know is there are several key things that I had to do to give it up completely, and I am not really sure of the one key thing that kept me a non-smoker two months later. I know that one of the key things that helped was telling myself once and a while that I was a non-smoker even when I knew I smoked. I would not say it out loud if people were around me that knew I smoked. They would probably think I was losing it. I told myself that I was a non-smoker for about two weeks prior to quitting. Self-preparation you may want to call it. I truly knew that I wanted to quit. Maybe I was ready.
That sunny afternoon I had one cigarette left which I smoked halfway through washing my jeep. I told my wife that I was not going to buy any more that afternoon. She heard me say that many times before. She told me to give a try and purchase some later and not to be hard on myself for a least trying. Again she repeated it was okay to buy some later. I think my wife just about gave up on me quitting as well.
The other key thing to do if you are attempting to quit is to learn how to procrastinate. That same afternoon I kept putting off buying cigarettes until bedtime. Bedtime came and it was too late to go to the store. I put it off until the next morning.
Morning came and I convinced myself that I was a non-smoker. I decided the other key thing to do was invite my weaknesses. I had coffee, which they say you shouldn’t do. I almost stopped my brother-in-law from coming over that same night because he smoked. I told my wife to have him come over, but he had to smoke outside alone. I thought about it for a moment and decided I was going to stand outside and watch him smoke. They also said not to drink beer or alcohol when you’re attempting to quit smoking. I bought myself a six-pack and drank and watched him smoke. That was the very first day. I finally quit and had no craving the next day. The nic fits were gone! The cravings were gone! The grumpiness from not smoking was gone! The wasted dollars on cigarettes was gone! It was like being born again.
The one key goal on quitting smoking for me was to convince myself a couple weeks before, that I was a non-smoker. Quitting halfway through the day was the other key thing to do. Think about that for a second. The day for me was not as long as it would have been if I quit first thing in the morning. When you quit in the morning, you have approximately 16 hours to go before you go to bed and forget about it. I quit at 3:00 in the afternoon with only 8 hours until bedtime to forget about it. It was half the amount of time to put everything to rest. I had a 16-hour jump to get the nicotine out of my system before the morning. Quitting in the morning was always tough before, because smoking and a cup of coffee was always an enjoyment for me.
The last key thing to do was just learn to say no for the remainder of the next day. The craving was not as bad as it was on other days that I quit. It must have had something to do with the time I quit. The craving was not as bad as prior attempts. The next day I could not understand why I smoked all that time. The addiction is finally gone and I do not want to pick up that cigarette to see what I am missing!
Just convince yourself that you are a non-smoker for approximately two weeks.
Finish that last cigarette half way through the day when you are doing something that you enjoy. Make sure you are in a good mood!
Do not tell anybody that you’re quitting. Just tell them you are not buying any for the rest of the day.
Learn to procrastinate for 6 to 8 hours, which shouldn’t be too hard for some of us.
Face all your weaknesses that you think will put you back on the smoking train.
Say no for one day! Say no for one day! Say no for one day!
Day three will set you free!!!
Smoking Cessation Techniques Makes Quitting Smoking Easy
You know you’re not doing yourself any favors by continuing to smoke, yet despite your best intentions, the first thing you do each day is light up a cigarette. If you’re wondering whether you’ll ever be able to quit, consider this. Smoking – nicotine – is addictive, and with any addiction, quitting brings with it withdrawal symptoms. You can conquer these.
There are many ways to quit smoking. There is the “cold turkey” method where you simply decide to stop. You throw away your cigarettes and you just quit – cold turkey. This method is appealing to many people because they seem to be able to get it over with quickly. Withdrawal symptoms will occur, but as long as their mind is firmly focused on the desire to quit, it is very successful.
There is also the “cutting back” method, in which you set a timeframe during which you will smoke less than you have been in the past. Once that time period has ended, you decrease even further and proceed incrementally through more timeframes at lesser and lesser amounts of smoking until you finally reduce the amount you smoke to zero.
At first glance, this cutting-back method may seem like the easiest way to quit, however it may be harder than it looks. Studies have found that often when a person has cut back, they eventually go back to smoking as much as they were before the quit attempt started.
Another way to stop smoking more easily is to use stop smoking aids – or nicotine replacement – in order to manage the cravings for this addictive substance as the smoking decreases. Nicotine aids popularly come in the form of stop-smoking gum, or nicotine patches that apply to the skin and supply small amounts of nicotine through the skin into the bloodstream.
More recently, there has become a stop smoking aid available in pill form that helps to block the receptors in the brain, decreasing the need for nicotine. There are potential side effects to this pill, but it appears to be very effective in helping smokers quit the habit.
So, what steps can you take to make it easier to quit smoking? Keep a journal of any activities, events, or stresses that seem to trigger a need for a smoke. For instance, when you find yourself absolutely craving a smoke, make a note of what things you were focused on leading up to the event. Then on a regular basis keep track of what seems to trigger this behavior.
Once you have chosen a method to quit smoking, whether cold turkey, cut-back, or through the use of a stop smoking aid, keep another journal in which you describe the results. Have the symptoms or cravings improved? Are they worse?
If you are taking a stop smoking aid, keep a record of what you take and when. Is it helping with the cravings? Are there any side effects? Keep track of when side effects occur and how severe they are. Having this information handy will give you an objective view of how this aid is assisting with your efforts to stop smoking.
Setting up journals like the ones described here is easy to do. You can use a paper worksheet, a computer word processing program, or even a spreadsheet program like Excel.
You owe it to yourself to take an active role in managing your own health. Smoking is not simply detrimental to your health. It has the ability to kill you in so many different ways, that is has become one of the greatest poisons of all time. With a proper approach, it can be controlled and eliminated, but you need to use every tool at your disposal to be successful in quitting smoking.