Help To Quit Smoking – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
Are you looking to successfully quit smoking? If so, you’ll already know all the good reasons why you should quit, yet somehow you either put it off or struggle to successfully kick the habit.
There’s no doubting all the good reasons for stopping smoking, and in this article I’m covering some recent research that looks at the estimated increase in risk of certain diseases from each cigarette smoked (not just from being a smoker but from each cigarette). Many smokers use cigarettes as a way of dealing with mental health issues such as stress and anxiety and you may worry about your mental health getting worse if you no longer have that crutch. If this is you, I’ve also taken a look at the association between smoking cessation and mental health in this article.
More and more people are being encouraged to switch to e-cigarettes because they are considered to be less harmful to your health than cigarettes. But does the evidence support e-cigarettes as helping you to stay off cigarettes?
I work with many people who want to quit their habit, and whether they are smoking 10-15 a day or more, and no matter how long you may have smoked, it is certainly possible to successfully quit. You may think you need to smoke, that you get something from it, and you may expect that giving up will mean all sorts of struggle and unpleasant withdrawal.
Yet with hypnotherapy, many people can and do quit for good. As with any goal, it requires some motivation, time and effort, yet the rewards for your health, for being their for your loved ones, for being free of having to always think about when you’ll get the next opportunity to light up, and for your finances, make a little bit of action very worthwhile. So as you know all the good stuff that will come with being a non-smoker, isn’t it time you made it happen?
Smoking and Your Health
In a previous article (Why Now Really Is the Time To Quit Smoking), I covered the research that showed the associations between smoking and the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19. Hopkinson et al (Current smoking and COVID-19 risk: results from a population symptom app in over 2.4 million people. 2020) studied data from 2.4 million people and found that smokers were more likely to report Covid-19 symptoms and were also more likely to report more symptoms.
Now, I believe this research was before vaccinations came onto the scene and I haven’t found an update, yet it underlines how smoking increases the risk of associated negative health issues (and the findings would still presumably apply now if you are unvaccinated). In that research, being a smoker increased both the likelihood of symptomatic disease and the severity of symptoms.
There can be many reasons for wanting to quit, but health and family are usually right up there. You want to be around as long as possible with your loved ones, and you certainly wouldn’t want your kids to follow in your footsteps and take up the habit. There’s the immense cost of smoking, the smell of it, the impact on your appearance and the negative perception of it from others. And maybe you are sick of your habit controlling your life and those thoughts of when and where you might be able to nip away for another fag.
Tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, and smokers typically die 10 years earlier than non-smokers. Research by King et al (2020) provides evidence for a causal effect of smoking intensity on a wide range of respiratory, and circulatory diseases, in addition to neoplasms, mental illness, injury and poisoning, endocrine/metabolism, sense organ, genitourinary, and infectious diseases. In all cases, greater smoking intensity was associated with harm, with an estimated 5% to 33% increase in the risk of disease per cigarette smoked.
“Each cigarette smoked per day elevated the odds of respiratory diseases by 5% to 33% (nine distinct diseases, including pneumonia, emphysema, obstructive chronic bronchitis, pleurisy, pulmonary collapse, respiratory failure) and the odds of circulatory disease by 5% to 23% (seven diseases, including atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, arterial embolisms). Further effects were seen for cancer within the respiratory system and other neoplasms, renal failure, septicaemia, and retinal disorders” (King et al, 2020).
Each cigarette you smoke matters to your health a great degree. If you are on the fence about quitting, perhaps because it seems like something you quite enjoy or that might be hard to achieve, it’s worth reminding yourself of the elevated odds of these diseases as you go to light up (and, by the way, many smokers tell me how surprised they are with how easily they cut down and quit with hypnotherapy).
Smoking, Stress and Mental Health
One of the most common reasons that people tell me they smoke, is to help them to try and manage their stress and anxiety. Some smokers even worry how they would cope without the crutch of a cigarette in stressful moments.
Putting aside the fact that there are many other methods of reducing your stress that are much healthier (and mean you develop much more effective coping techniques), there is nothing chemically in a cigarette that lowers stress, in fact the reverse is true. Smoking a cigarette is like a shot of stress, yet the ritual of going outside, getting away from things for a moment, having some thinking time and peace, and taking a few breaths of air, are much more likely to be the real reasons that you feel calmer and more relaxed. The cigarette is just your cue, or excuse, to go and relax for a few moments.
If you are someone who worries that quitting smoking may worsen your mental health, then we have the scientific evidence that has investigated this. Taylor et al (2021), examined the association between tobacco smoking cessation and change in mental health. They found that mental health does not worsen as a result of quitting smoking, and that smoking cessation may even be associated with small to moderate improvements in mental health.
In summary, people who stop smoking are not likely to experience a worsening in their mood long-term, whether they have a mental health condition or not. They may also experience improvements in their mental health, such as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms.
And so, if you have been using cigarettes as form of self-medication or to try and alleviate anxiety and stress, then this research suggests that your mental health may well be better off from quitting smoking instead.
Are E-Cigarettes Your Quit Smoking Solution?
With all the adverse health consequences from smoking cigarettes, it’s no wonder that new potential solutions continue to come onto the market as aids to help you quit smoking.
Over recent years, e-cigarettes have been heralded as the solution to adopt if you want to quit smoking. Recently, there’s even been talk about the NHS providing e-cigarettes to help people who want to quit the habit. The general assumption is that e-cigarettes are less harmful than cigarettes and therefore the lesser of two ‘evils’ (although data in the future will likely tell us more about the impacts of vaping on your health).
Certainly, I’ve known people who quit smoking cigarettes and move to e-cigarettes, and then reduce the nicotine strength, sometimes to zero. The fact they may still carry out the behaviours and rituals of smoking just shows how important it is to address the habit side of smoking if you want to give up reliance on smoking and vaping.
On the flip side, I’ve helped many people quit smoking without needing e-cigarettes because they don’t want to be tied to them or controlled by them or sometimes because they don’t want to have to rely on anything at all. As with quitting smoking, there can be many reasons why someone would want to quit, from being fed up with needing to do it, wanting freedom from being controlled by the habit, concerns about their increasing use of vaping (as it can often be used in more places) and some people describe it feeling a bit silly to use one.
Sometimes people mix their use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes to try to reduce the potential adverse health consequences. However, research suggests this may not bring the health benefits you might think.
Stokes et al (Association of Cigarette and Electronic Cigarette Use Patterns With Levels of Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Biomarkers Among US Adults: Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study. 2020) found that to gain the health benefits you are seeking you should either completely replace cigarette smoking with e-cigarettes or quit the use of both products completely.
That is, mixing cigarette smoking and e-cigarettes isn’t as beneficial to your health as completely stopping smoking and only vaping, or quitting both altogether. However attached you feel to your smoking and/or vaping habit, and even if there are times you think you need it or perhaps even somehow enjoy it, it certainly is possible to quit smoking completely and to give up vaping too.
When I first meet smokers they often tell me how much they enjoy their cigarettes. And certainly there can be perceived benefits from the habit, such as having a few moments of peace to yourself, some thinking time or the social interaction of being with other smokers.
However, I’ve yet to meet any smokers who truthfully enjoy every puff of every cigarette. In all likelihood, the ‘enjoyment’ is a few puffs a day at most. That’s not much of a pleasurable return when you think of the financial cost and the likely cost on your health. When you really think about it, most of the perceived benefits, including relaxation, can easily be achieved in other ways. Yet the habit side of things means you follow the same smoking pattern (until you come to me for hypnotherapy sessions, of course!).
Do E-Cigarettes Help You Quit Smoking Successfully?
That research suggests that to gain the health benefits you should either completely replace cigarette smoking with e-cigarettes or quit the use of both products completely.
And if you do decide to move towards e-cigarettes, how helpful are they in helping you to quit cigarette smoking completely? Again, we have the research and evidence to help us here.
Pierce et al (2021), assessed whether people who recently quit smoking and who had switched to e-cigarettes or another tobacco product were less likely to relapse to cigarette smoking compared with those who remained tobacco free.
As they describe, many smokers switch to less harmful sources of nicotine to try and reduce the health consequences of cigarette smoking. There is also some evidence that people who smoke cigarettes can use e-cigarettes to help them quit and not relapse, at least in the short term. However, this research study found that switching to e-cigarettes did not help smokers to remain free of cigarettes.
“Switching to e-cigarettes (even on a daily basis) was not associated with helping smokers remain abstinent from cigarettes. Indeed, the evidence suggested that switching to alternate tobacco products by recent former smokers may be associated with increased risk of a relapse to cigarette smoking” (Pierce et al, 2021).
This suggests that whilst e-cigarettes are considered to be less harmful than cigarettes, it’s use may not help you to successfully quit smoking for good. And the best approach if you want to quit smoking, remains moving away from all nicotine products completely.
Help To Quit Smoking
Now, the thought of quitting smoking and not relying on other products, like e-cigarettes, may seem daunting at first. You may have smoked many times a day for many years and it may seem like something you can’t just give up. You may have even tried to quit before using things like nicotine replacement products or just sheer grit and willpower.
Whilst some smokers can and do just quit and seem to succeed, the very prospect of not having your daily habit, or losing the things you get from your smoking behaviours, or the worry of suffering and struggle, can lead to procrastination and postponement (even though you know that your health is at risk).
Yet many of the people I help to quit smoking tell me how surprisingly easy they find the transition to being a non-smoker.
For example, here’s what Christine recently posted in a Google review:
“I went to Dan to get help to stop smoking. Having failed many times over the years using different nicotine replacements and only managing to stop for a few weeks, I am pleased to say that I have been a non-smoker for three months. The hypnotherapy sessions made this attempt to stop smoking much easier than I had expected. I would recommend anyone who is thinking of going to Dan to go straight ahead and book your appointment now!”
Sometimes my stop smoking clients literally cannot believe that they just don’t fancy a cigarette any more, and wish they’d tried hypnotherapy sooner. They find they can be around other smokers and in all the usual situations in their life but without any need for old habitual thoughts and feelings.
That’s not to say that you get to do nothing and that the hypnosis magically transforms you into a happy non-smoker. You need to have reasons and motivations to quit. You need to take specific (usually simple) steps to change your habit. And, as I’m sure you know, any goal worth achieving (and especially one that gives you back control and that has so many health benefits) can require a bit of time and effort to get you there. But heck, aren’t the rewards worth a little bit of action and effort?
So if you’d like to have a chat about hypnotherapy to quit smoking, do get in touch and we can talk through how it all works and what we will do to help you successfully become a non-smoker.
To your health and happiness,
Dan Regan
Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket
Need help to quit smoking or to stop using e-cigarettes? Book your Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session with Dan now: Appointments
Find out what other people have said after their hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Reviews
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References:
Hopkinson, N.S., Rossi, N., El-Sayed_Moustafa, J., Laverty, A.A., Quint, J.K., Freidin, M., Visconti, A., Murray, B., Modat, M., Ourselin, S. and Small, K., Current smoking and COVID-19 risk: results from a population symptom app in over 2.4 million people. Thorax.
King, C., Mulugeta, A., Nabi, F., Walton, R., Zhou, A. and Hyppönen, E., 2020. Mendelian randomization case-control PheWAS in UK Biobank shows evidence of causality for smoking intensity in 28 distinct clinical conditions. EClinicalMedicine, 26, p.100488.
Pierce, J.P., Chen, R., Kealey, S., Leas, E.C., White, M.M., Stone, M.D., McMenamin, S.B., Trinidad, D.R., Strong, D.R., Benmarhnia, T. and Messer, K., 2021. Incidence of Cigarette Smoking Relapse Among Individuals Who Switched to e-Cigarettes or Other Tobacco Products. JAMA Network Open, 4(10), pp.e2128810-e2128810.
Stokes, A.C., Xie, W., Wilson, A.E., Yang, H., Orimoloye, O.A., Harlow, A.F., Fetterman, J.L., DeFilippis, A.P., Benjamin, E.J., Robertson, R.M. and Bhatnagar, A., 2020. Association of Cigarette and Electronic Cigarette Use Patterns With Levels of Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Biomarkers Among US Adults: Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study. Circulation.
Taylor, G.M., Lindson, N., Farley, A., Leinberger-Jabari, A., Sawyer, K., te Water Naudé, R., Theodoulou, A., King, N., Burke, C. and Aveyard, P., 2021. Smoking cessation for improving mental health. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (3).
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