<![CDATA[How to Quit Smoking

<![CDATA[How to Quit Smoking - Health.com]]> en daily 1 Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with WikioSubscribe with Daily RotationSome combination of drugs, stop-smoking aids, counseling, support, and habit changes will work for you. Maybe not the first time, but maybe this time. <![CDATA[Smoking Shortens Your Lifespan]]>

researchers at the University of Bristol in England. That means that 10 cigarettes a day for 10 years takes more than nine months off your life.

Tobacco was responsible for the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century, and the World Health Organization estimates that in the 21st, cigarettes and other tobacco products could kill up to 1 billion. Use the information below to determine how cigarette smoking could affect your chances of living to a ripe old age.

]]> Each cigarette you suck down cuts about 11 minutes from your expected lifespan. (FOTOLIA/HEALTH) <![CDATA[Quitting Cigarettes: 10 Smokers Who Kicked Butt (or Are Trying To)]]>

Essence and All You magazines to send in their stories about quitting smoking—some successful, some not. Here are some of the responses that came in. View the slideshow.]]> (ISTOCKPHOTO) <![CDATA[What Those Funny Old Smoking Ads Really Show]]>

Watch the slideshow.]]> (STANFORD SCHOOL OF MEDICINE) <![CDATA[As Wall Street Burns, Smokers Light Up]]>

Before the turmoil, says Giliberti, a manager at Deloitte who works with mortgage-backed securities, "I was maybe a pack a week." Now? "Probably double that...I can't stare at my computer screen anymore and watch the market collapse in front of me—I just want to get away from it."

Giliberti was standing outside the Deloitte offices at the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, furiously thumbing his BlackBerry with one hand and holding a Marlboro Light with the other. He is, he says, "32 going on 55."

From the Financial Center to Wall Street itself to the shell-shocked (former) Lehman Brothers building in midtown Manhattan, it's easy to find stressed-out financial workers sucking on cigarettes, and most will tell you they're lighting up more often. Nobody is thinking of quitting.

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A Lehman Brothers employee who, for now, has kept his job with new owner Barclays, is smoking "20, 30% more," in part because "we don’t really have much work to do these days, so we just sit around and talk to people."

Nearby, a woman named Liz, who has been let go from Lehman along with her boss, says that stress at the company in the past six months led her to start smoking for the first time in her life—at the age of 61.

"Everybody could tell that Lehman was falling apart the end of last year," she says. "I was under a tremendous amount of pressure, so I picked up a cigarette." It didn’t help matters that she lived with her daughter and her daughter’s fiancé, both of whom smoke.

Next Page: The lowdown on smoking and stress

Smoking and stress go hand in hand, but the relationship isn’t as simple as it appears, according to Matthew Palmatier, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Kansas State University, who is conducting research funded by the National Institutes of Health on the “reinforcing” and mood-regulating effects of nicotine on rats.

Smokers exhibit elevated physical signs of stress, Palmatier says. Further, smoking elevates those signs of stress. Yet smokers report stress reduction from their habit. "So it makes these stressed people physiologically even more stressed, but what they report is that it reduces their stress," Palmatier says. One likely explanation is nicotine’s ability to stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain even as it stresses other systems.

A few blocks away, on Sixth Avenue, the 45-year-old De La Concha cigar shop remains one of the few businesses or offices in New York City where smoking is still legal. Tom Johansmeyer, a freelance PR rep for the shop, says De La Concha has become a socializing and networking spot for laid-off finance workers. Mind you, customers are switching from $10 or $15 cigars to the $8 house blend, the Grand Reserve.

One such customer is Tom Kochilas of Queens, N.Y., who was laid off in March from Merrill Lynch. He says he drops by the store daily for an $8 smoke.

Does the cigar help relieve the stress of being out of work? "I was actually more stressed when I was working," he says. "Now I’m not stressed at all." He puffs thoughtfully on his Grand Reserve. "Maybe that’s a bad thing." ]]> Plummeting stock prices might make you more prone to puffing on cigarettes. (GETTY IMAGES) <![CDATA[When Smoking Tastes Good, It's Harder to Quit]]>

struggling to quit.

"The sensory components—the taste of it, the feel of inhaled smoke—these are an important part of why people smoke," says Joseph McClernon, PhD, an assistant research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

And they are also an important part of why people quit. "Taste can potentially help us explain who smokes and who doesn’t," says McClernon.

A little chocolate with your cigarette?
A typical cigarette may include cocoa, honey, vanilla, and licorice. While the taste of a particular brand has a lot to do with its tobacco blend, hundreds of additives may be included to smooth out the tobacco’s rough edges and create a more delicious puff.

This may sound like nothing more than a tricky way of winning your loyalty to a particular brand—or to cigarettes in general. But many of these additives can be dangerous when inhaled. "The additives are found in a lot of products that are eaten and are safe, but when burned they’re different products," explains K. Michael Cummings, PhD, chair of the department of health behavior at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.

Cocoa, for example, is a nice treat for a cold winter’s night when mixed in its powdered form with hot milk. But when burned in a cigarette, cocoa produces bromine gas, which both dilates and anesthetizes the lungs, maximizing their absorption of smoke and nicotine.

"Bitter tasters" are less likely to smoke
Not everyone is susceptible to the sweet lure of cigarettes’ taste. So-called bitter tasters are less likely to cite taste as a motivating factor for smoking—and less likely to smoke in the first place.

This category of smoker was investigated in a 2001 study published in Addictive Behaviors; researchers at the National Institutes of Health compared subjects’ genetic ability to recognize bitter flavors with their likelihood of smoking and their motivations for lighting up.

The study found that at the other end of the spectrum from bitter tasters were smokers with very little bitter sensitivity ("nontasters"), who were at higher risk for heavy smoking and therefore more likely to become addicted to nicotine.

Some food makes smoking taste better
If you’re not genetically programmed to find smoking hard to quit, maybe it’s the food you eat that makes cigarettes so enticing.

A 2007 study—led by McClernon and published by Duke University Medical Center in Nicotine & Tobacco Research—found that certain foods enhance smoking, while other foods get in the way of one's enjoyment of a cigarette. Red meat, coffee, and alcohol seem to make cigarettes taste better, while fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and noncaffeinated beverages such as water and juice were most often cited as interfering with the taste.

This may explain the coffee-cigarette connection as well. "The conventional wisdom has been that there’s something about the combination of nicotine and caffeine that smokers like," McClernon says, referring to theories that the two substances may complement each other chemically. "But it may simply be that they taste better together—like Oreos and cold milk."

The research is preliminary, but it does suggest a decent strategy for quitting smoking. Grabbing a celery or carrot stick might indeed do more than just distract you from your cigarette craving.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Quit Smoking Without Gaining (Much) Weight]]>

quit smoking? Probably. Four out of five quitters gain some weight—4 pounds to 10 pounds each, on average. The good news, however, is that quitters usually do get back to a normal weight, especially when the focus is on stopping smoking first.

Should you put off quitting in order to keep off unhealthy extra pounds? Nope. The science is unequivocal: "There’s no question that any weight gain is preferable to continuing to smoke," says Kenneth A. Perkins, PhD, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Emily Rubin, RD, of the Digestive Disease Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, agrees. "You’d have to gain 100 pounds to have the same health risks that a pack-a-day cigarette habit would give you," she says.

Why do quitters usually gain weight?
Smokers develop a lifestyle that revolves around smoking rather than eating or exercising. But it’s also true that smoking helps you keep your weight down (if at great cost to your heart and other organs, not to mention your appearance and smell). As a smoker, your body gets used to these facts:

Smoking burns calories. Smoking elevates your heart rate and increases your metabolism; when you quit, you burn about 100 fewer calories a day. After quitting, it can take weeks or even months for your metabolism to rebound.
Smoking suppresses hunger. Nicotine causes the liver to release glycogen, which raises your blood-sugar level slightly and suppresses appetite. Until your metabolism adjusts, expect to gain about a pound a week.
Smoking makes you feel good. Nicotine increases the levels of dopamine (a chemical associated with pleasure) in the brain. High-calorie treats, such as candy and cookies, produce much the same effect, so after quitting, you may be tempted to replace cigarettes with food. Alcohol boosts dopamine levels as well, and studies show that alcohol use tends to increase after quitting. This mechanism may explain why bupropion (Zyban), an antidepressant that works on the brain’s dopamine system, has shown to be helpful for smoking cessation.
Smoking gives you something to do with your mouth and hands. Eating does the same—and makes you feel less deprived by your decision to quit.
Smoking dulls your taste buds. After you quit, food begins to taste and smell better, so you may find yourself wanting to eat more.
Smoking is reliable when other things are not. People use both cigarettes and food as a way to deal with boredom or stress, as a reward, or as a crutch in social situations.

Don’t think about your weight so much
Experts recommend focusing on the quitting process first and getting to the matter of your weight later on. "If you’re dieting while you’re trying to quit, there’s too much deprivation going on," says Perkins. Obsessing about keeping weight off while attempting to quit may even be counterproductive—on both fronts.

This dynamic is especially common for women, for whom weight gain can be such a tricky issue. (In addition to weight issues, research shows a range of other sex-based smoking differences.)

In a 2001 study, 219 women who wanted to quit—but were concerned about gaining weight—were divided into three groups. One group received cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) designed to help them accept a modest weight gain in exchange for the benefits of quitting smoking. Another group was given weight-control counseling and daily calorie goals. A third group (the control group) received counseling sessions in which they discussed their interpersonal relationships. A year later, 21% of the CBT group had successfully quit smoking, compared with 13% of the weight-control group and 9% of the control group. On average, the members of the CBT group also gained less weight than the other groups.

"Sometimes folks—particularly women—gain more, paradoxically, when they are concerned about weight gain, depending on how they approach the issue of quitting and weight," says Michele Levine, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

What to do about weight gain
Once you’ve congratulated yourself for quitting smoking (and given your body a few weeks to settle down), it’s time to work on replacing your bad habits with some good ones.

Conquer your smoking triggers. For example, if you were used to smoking after a meal, get up from the table and brush your teeth instead.
Sidetrack that oral fixation. Experts recommend chewing celery, carrots, sugar-free gum or candies, or playing with a straw or toothpick.
Try cognitive-behavioral therapy. This can help you focus on taking care of yourself—quitting first and then working on weight control.

And consider this core advice for controlling your weight, whatever the situation.

Eat smaller, more frequent meals to increase your metabolism and avoid getting so hungry that you overeat.
Eat high-protein, high-fiber foods because they fill up your stomach more (and because they’re better for you).
Exercise. Instead of going to smoke or grab a high-fat snack, take a walk or go to the gym. Keep in mind that moderate exercise, such as a walk during lunch, will actually decrease your appetite, because as you exercise fat breaks down and enters your bloodstream. The extra muscle mass you gain by exercising will also help increase your metabolism, not to mention that exercise helps you deal with stress, boredom, and tension.

Finally, a word to the wise: Don’t rely on nicotine-replacement therapy or smoking-cessation drugs to control your weight when quitting. The weight effects can be unpredictable and temporary. And beware of programs that guarantee you can put down the cigarettes without picking up some pounds. They’re probably too good to be true.]]> Don't obsess over the scale while you're trying to quit. Focus first on kicking the habit, then worry about your waistline. (PRISCILLA DE CASTRO) <![CDATA[Breathing Fire, Not Smoke]]>

The most apt description of what I’ve been fighting is this: Smoking creates an itch in the lung that only a cigarette can scratch. This past week my lungs have felt like flea-infested varmints. Perhaps I’d revived the nicotine monster by cheating with a puff here and there, renewing old cravings. Or maybe my lungs desired smoke because I put myself on a roller-coaster ride when I started slapping the nicotine patch on willy-nilly last week. (I didn’t follow the directions at all.)

But this feels different than a nicotine craving. It is a very specific wanting that crops up in my lungs. Yesterday I was dying to get in there and scratch it. I looked through the advice I’ve received in the past month and considered the three options that seemed most likely to reach my lungs.

Smoke a joint.
Use a nicotine inhaler.
Practice yoga.

You probably guessed that the first suggestion didn’t come from a medical source. Smoking marijuana cigarettes damages the lungs. But the woman friend who swears by this method is no sloppy stoner; she’s a successful ex-smoker. She told me to fill up a cigarette case with joints and light up whenever I get that craving in the lungs. This breaks the habit, she promised, because a gal can only smoke so much ganja.

Hmm. It was fun to think that getting high as a kite every day could improve my life, but I seriously doubted I could keep a straight face while saying: “But I’m just doing this to quit smoking, officer.” So I looked to option 2.

Sucking on a nicotine inhaler probably would’ve been a great solution. Unfortunately, I was not prepared when the need came yesterday. First I would’ve needed to go to the pharmacy, which meant I’d need a prescription, which meant I’d need a doctor’s appointment, which meant I’d just have to wait. (Not that getting marijuana would’ve been any easier.)

Patience has not become a virtue of mine since I quit cigarettes, so I went for the more convenient option 3.

I dusted off my old green yoga mat and sat in a cross-legged position to practice some yoga breathing techniques, or pranayama. I started out with three basic breathing exercises that I remembered: ujjayi (ocean-sounding breath), dirgha (complete breath), and nadi (sweet breath). Then I moved on to the energizing breath of fire.

There’s irony for me in the name breath of fire. See, I was quite the yogi a decade ago, but as I deepened my practice of yoga, I accidentally deepened my smoking addiction. In yoga I had learned to take long, slow inhalations, to send my breath to tense or empty places, to let my breath sit there, still and calm, and then to release it in slow motion. Then I started doing this with cigarette smoke, holding it in deep and long. Eventually, after hip surgery, I abandoned yoga, but genius that I am, I stuck with the smoking.

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Coming back to the yoga mat as a nonsmoker is like diving into a pool for the first time after a long hot summer. I lost myself yesterday in the yogic breathing. Was I immersed for 15 minutes? Forty minutes? When I stood to begin sun salutations, I realized that the itch was gone! The breathing had filled my lungs with pure relief.

I didn’t recognize the strength of my own breath or my own mind before, but now that I remember how to breathe fire, the nicotine monster is no match.

This is Libby's final post about quitting smoking.

Read previous posts:
Quitting Smoking Gave Me Hips (August 8, 2008)
Sparring With My Smoking Triggers (August 1, 2008)
Catching My Breath After Years of Running on Smoke (July 25, 2008)
Thank You, Wise Ex-Smokers, et al (July 18, 2008)
Can I Walk and Not Smoke at the Same Time? (July 15, 2008)
Dare Me to Quit (July 9, 2008)

Read Katherine's quitting blog]]> (TODD SENTZ) <![CDATA[I Made It]]>

nonsmoker reminds me of what it’s like to start a new job. You know what you’re supposed to do, but you have no idea how to accomplish it. You spend the first few days just figuring out the coffeemaker and putting your mistakes in the shredder. You end the week wishing you could just go back to your old job, where people understood you.

Then things improve a little bit. You figure out the coffeepot, some kind soul shows you how to work the copy machine, and you find a good place for lunch. The praise from your boss helps, but you suspect the receptionist of trying to sabotage your work.

After 21 days, things change dramatically. You’ve mastered the database and the receptionist has realized you’re going to make it and moved on to weaker prey. Your first day seems like a million years ago.

So that’s where I am now. The beginning sure was hard, but at least it feels like a lifetime ago. I’m on the other side!

For me, there was a lot more to this than setting a quit date and buying some nicotine gum. There’s been a whole new set of skills to learn, then master. It took practice and some trial and error. Each little success built on what came before it, until it became my new way of living.

I learned how to fill up my gas tank without going into the store for a fix. I figured out how to end the day without a cigarette, and to drive for hours with no thought of smoking. And yes—I even made it through law school exams with flying colors.

One thing common to all quit-smoking programs is that you absolutely must reward yourself. I gave a lot of thought to my reward. Sure, cigarettes are expensive, but what with the high cost of living these days, I still had to think small. Yet I wanted something more lasting than a vacation or a party.

After much thought, I ultimately decided—boring though it may seem—that not smelling like an ashtray and being free of that awful need to have a cigarette nearby is more enjoyable than anything I could think to buy myself. Then there’s the extra ten pounds I have as a lasting reminder of my accomplishments. I consider every inch of fat to be well and truly earned.

It’s finally over and I don’t regret a minute of it. If anything keeps me from going back to my old ways, it’s the certainty that I never want to go through this again.

This is Katherine's final post about quitting smoking.

Read Katherine's previous posts:
Quitting During Final Exams: My Hardest Test Yet (August 6, 2008)
The Elephant in the Room (July 30, 2008)
James Bond Tried to Hypnotize Me to Stop Smoking (July 23, 2008)
I Quit! (I Think) (July 16, 2008)
I'm Quitting Tomorrow (July 9, 2008)

Also read Libby's quitting blog]]> (KATHERINE ELMORE) <![CDATA[Men and Women Smoke—and Quit—Differently ]]>

These are just a few of the research findings into what has emerged as an apparent gender gap between male and female smokers. This research suggests that men smoke mainly for the nicotine, while women tend to care about the smell and taste, the hand-to-mouth sensation, weight control, and boosting their moods.

Although no one really understands what causes these differences, experts say considering them as you implement your quitting strategy might just give you an edge.

Nicotine replacement doesn’t work as well for women
The sexes have about the same rates of success with prescription smoking-cessation drugs, but studies of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), such as the patch and nicotine gum, reveal differences. NRT seems to help both men and women get through those tricky first few months without cigarettes, but after six months, women slide back into the habit at higher rates than men.

On the other hand, gender differences in smoking addiction may also account for an interesting exception to the NRT gender gap: the inhaler, the small, plastic cigarette-holder-shaped device that provides a dose of vaporized nicotine when you take a determined drag from it. In a 2001 study of 504 smokers, inhalers proved more effective for women than for men (at least in the short term), while men experienced more success with the other three options: spray, patch, and especially gum.

"Women lose both the sensory cues and the nicotine when they quit smoking," Cora Lee Wetherington, PhD, explained in a 2002 article by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), where she is the women and gender research coordinator. "Therefore, replacing those cues—something the inhaler can do, but not the patch or gum—and learning ways to avoid or cope with those cues may help more women succeed in quitting."

Women shouldn't sweat weight gain, but should consider their periods
More than half of women smokers say in studies that weight concerns are a major obstacle to quitting. There’s no surprise there, but such research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) might be especially well suited to women trying to quit because it can help them leap that psychological hurdle and accept that, yes indeed, they will probably gain some weight when they quit. A 2001 study following more than 200 women who quit smoking found that after a year, those who received CBT stayed off cigarettes at higher rates—and gained half as much weight, on average—as those who entered a weight-control program.

Women might do well to combine their CBT with a glance at their menstrual calendars as well. Studies show menstruation has a unique effect on tobacco withdrawal symptoms.

"Our work and [the work of] others have shown that women who quit in the luteal phase had more nicotine withdrawal symptoms, and [they] suggest that quitting in the follicular phase may be best," says Michele D. Levine, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Translation: Women shouldn't exacerbate monthly moodiness (and withdrawal symptoms) by trying to quit smoking in the middle of PMS; it's best to wait until the first day after a period starts to toss those butts.
]]> Studies have shown that after six months on nicotine replacement products, women slide back into the habit at higher rates than men. (ISTOCK/123RF/HEALTH) <![CDATA[Quitting Smoking Gave Me Hips]]>

whiter teeth, etc., but all I see on Day 17 is more Libby.

I’ve added five pounds to my 5-foot-9 frame. Aesthetically, that’s just fine by me. Medically, it’s not fine. Scientifically, it seems inevitable.

I’ve always heard people describe my body type as "athletic" or "a boy build" (read: un-curvy, un-girly). So I am excited to have some soft pounds rounding me out. Many dancers (ballerinas, in particular) strive to be super skinny, but that’s not the case for the dancers I run with. For both Afro-Haitian dance and sassy second-line dance, the more we have to shake, the better! So I was happy to learn that my extra poundage will likely stick to my hips rather than my waist. This type of weight distribution is easier on the heart too!

There is, however, a medical issue that has cropped up. By the charts, I’m at a healthy weight with or without the five pounds, but extra weight causes significant pain in my arthritic hips. It is estimated that every pound of weight gained feels like at least three pounds on one's hips. In other words, I’ve just tossed 15 pounds on these fragile joints. And I’m feeling it.

The weird thing is that unlike my fellow quitter Katherine Elmore, who attributes her weight gain to a new hearty appetite, I haven’t done anything to bring on these pounds.

My Jethro Bodine–like food consumption is nothing new: I’ve always cleaned my husband’s plate with gusto and I’ve eaten at least 2,500 calories a day ever since I can remember. In fact, I probably should’ve lost weight since I’ve added a bit more exercise in each week. Right?

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