In the quit smoking world there are hundreds, if not thousands of tools available which claim to assist you. These range from chemicals to mind tools to herbal remedies, and everything in between. Below is an overview of the 6 most common types of smoking cessation tools.

1. Nicotine Replacement Therapy

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) comes in many forms including gum, inhalers, lozenges, lolipops, nasal spray, patches, and more. With NRT, it is said that your chances of quitting are doubled – especially if you smoke soon after waking. The basic premise to NRT is that you have a nicotine addiction which you slowly wean off of. You take gradually smaller doses of the NRT replacement until you no longer have an addiction.

The biggest failure which occurs with NRT is when your nicotine cravings exceed the amount you are getting, and you either smoke a cigarette or increase your NRT dosage.

2. Medication

Smoking cessation medications like nicoderm, Zyban, and Chantix work by regulating the transmitters associated with nicotine uptake. To some extent their exact method remains a mystery, but they tend to have a cumulative effect of reducing or eliminating nicotine cravings. Unfortunately, they also have many side effects. Some of the more common ones include nausea, dizziness, dry mouth, and in some cases depressive illness. Like NRT, relapse is still possible, though the rates tend to be lower.

3. Acupuncture / Low Level Laser

An increasingly popular quit smoking tool is acupuncture, and its technologically advanced equivalent – low level laser therapy. Both of these treatments work approximately by regulating chemicals in the body such as endorphins. By balancing these chemicals, they are able to break the cycle of addiction which caused excessive endorphins to be released during smoking. The idea behind low level laser is that the common acupuncture points can be controlled more precisely.

4. Hypnosis & Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Rather than targeting your body’s hormones and chemicals, Hypnosis and its close cousin NLP attempt to work by targeting the subconscious desires and the conditioning of those desires in your mind. Unlike both NRT and drugs, they have no side effects. They also have a surprisingly high success rate depending on how they are administered. The main difference between the two is that you stay fully conscious with NLP whereas hypnotherapy is more of a relaxing trance state.

5. Natural Herbal Remedies

There are a multitude of natural herbs and plants which target your neuro-chemical system in a manner similar to prescription drugs or NRT, but without as many side effects. These include Lobelia, Passion Flower, Vitamin B12, 5-htp, Valerian, and many others. Many communities exist on the Internet (forums) in which you can find guidance from other people who are currently or have previously used these successfully. A word of caution – While they’re almost always cheaper, sometimes herbs can be more dangerous than medication.

6. Cold Turkey

Perhaps the most common method of all is probably least expected – quitting outright. It’s said that your mind takes an average of 7 tries before you can successfully quit smoking – but each time it learns and becomes better for the next. Quitting cold turkey means you smoke one day and put them down the next – forever. While it seems like that would take a lot of willpower, it can actually be easier in some ways. For one, you are not extending the addiction cycle for weeks on end like with NRT. Also, you are not reinforcing your triggers by smoking at a reduced rate. That being said, however, it does take a lot of willpower all at once.

Always remember that out of the great many ‘tools’ available to quit smoking – they will all fail in the face of your desire. That is – you have to want to quit badly enough that it outweighs your desire to smoke again. Achieving that is at least half the battle.

Many people would like to quit smoking without suffering from the side effects of unnatural quit smoking therapies – prescription drugs, NRT, and other over the counter medications. And for good reason – some of these treatments have side effects as bad as smoking itself! And while that may seem ok at first becuase you won’t be on them for 30 years, it only takes a little while before they have an effect.

Instead, try one of the many natural remedies available to quit smoking. They come in many forms – from herbal supplements to hypnotherapy, listed below are just some of the many natural smoking cessation remedies.

1. Cold Turkey

We should start our list off with the king of all natural quit smoking methods – quitting cold turkey. The chances of this working go up every time you try, so its always worth the effort. Additionaly, there can be no side effects because you simply put down the cigarette! Well, ok, that’s not totally true as you’ll still suffer from nicotine withdrawal – which brings us to our next natural smoking cessation tool..

2. Herbs

There are a very large number of herbs and plants which have been found helpful in quitting smoking. Some of them alleviate the various side effects, some help with healing after quitting, and still others act as quitting aids. Just a few of the various herbs include Bayberry, Eucalyptus, Gentian, Ginger root, Ginseng, Lobelia, Mullein, Peppermint, Skullcap, St john’s wort, Slippery Elm, and others.

3. Prepackaged Herbal Supplements

In addition to the herbs themselves, many companies have taken on the task of creating supplements with various combinations of herbs that produce theraputic results. Cigarrest and Rx-Hale are two such supplements, and there are others. They claim to reduce side effects and cravings so that you will be more likely to quit. Just keep in mind that with both herbs and supplements – there is still the possibility of risk. Just because they’re natural doesn’t mean they’re garaunteed safe. Always check with a nutritionist to be sure, and communities around the Internet can usually provide their feedback as well.

4. Food

Here is an option that isn’t so obvious – eating food. Now of course, the potential side effect is that you will gain weight. But if you size your portions correctly, there are a great many foods which can reduce your cravings. Some of these include beef, cottage cheese, cold water fish, eggs, lamb, legumes, nuts, poultry, seeds, tofu, and yogurt. Anything which provides good protein will be helpful – just remember to wait 20 minutes after your first serving so that your blood sugar has time to level off.
In addition to reducing craving, so called ‘booster’ foods can help you heal faster. These include garlic for detoxification, Ginger to stimulate food digestion, and Cayenne to both help digestion and improve circulation.

5. Acupuncture

One of the amazing inventions of Chinese culture is very helpful for quitting smoking. A skilled acupuncture therapist can help you reduce cravings, reduce nicotine withdrawal symptoms, keep weight off, reduce any pain, improve circulation, improve energy, reduce mood swings, and much more.

6. Hypnotherapy

Perhaps the most well known smoking cessation system is hypnotherapy. Many people have visions of a magician putting someone to sleep and then lulling them to dance around like a chicken – but this simply isn’t the case. Hypnotherapists put you into a relaxed state at which time they have e direct channel to your subconscious mind. Using this powerful suggestability, they are able to tear down the triggers and associations which make you crave cigarettes and replace them with healthy alternatives. For those who follow through with treatment, very high success rates are reported with minimal side effects.

Regardless the method (or combination of methods) you choose, know that there are a great many alternatives to popping a prescription pill and hoping for the best. These natural therapies can relieve almost all discomfort associated with smoking and have you back on your feet again in no time. You’ll be so glad you tried once you feel like your 20 years younger having never smoked at all.

Many people want to know: “Is there anything I can do to clean my lungs faster after quitting?” As it turns out, the answer to this question is not as ‘clear’ as we would like it to be. While many people have good experiences to report from lifestyle changes, technically there is no scientific evidence which supports the claim that diet, exercise, or other factors will dramatically impact healing after quitting. Either way, your lungs will heal in time after quitting. However, here are the most common methods used by people who desire to speed up the healing process..

Exercise Helps Clear Lungs and Increase Endurance

This is probably the most popular method and most significant factor in determining what happens to your lungs after quitting. Exercising will assist in boosting your lung capacity. You will lose your breath less often and unwanted debris will be cleared from your lungs faster. This is especially helpful soon after quitting – when it helps clear out large debris and buildup from the inside of your lungs.

Dietary Changes Help Heal the Body and Remove Waste

Probably the most significant dietary change you can make is to simply drink more water. Building up to at least half a gallon a day. Water is the primary method by which our body clears waste material, and this is especially important in post-smoking lungs.

Also important is increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables. These are very commonly lacking in our modern diet, yet they’re extremely beneficial in healing tissues and building new cells. Your energy will increase, your intestines will work more efficiently in removing waste, and you will significantly reduce your chances of developing cancer.

This sounds good on the surface, but we often complain about the taste. Two very simple ways to consume more of these food groups is by blending them into smoothies and stirfry’s. This makes them simple to prepare and very good to taste.

Supplements Said to have Healing Properties

Many people have found specific supplements which they claim have helped in healing various lung conditions. These include the Ultimate Respiratory Cleanse (by Nature’s Secret), N-Acetyl Cysteine, Eriodictyon Angustifolium (Yerba Santa), and others. Vitamin A has further been shown to help re-develop the tiny air sacs in your lungs damaged by smoking, known as alveoli. These are what allow the exchange of carbon dioxide waste gas for more oxygen, and thus are very important to overall endurance and body function.

When you combine all possible lifestyle changes into a regular daily program, you are going to benefit greatly in a variety of ways. Although there may not be one single factor which has been scientifically demonstrated to boost lung healing – diet and exercise will make you feel like a totally new person. Coincidentally, they will also help reduce your cravings at the same time! So find an activity partner and go have fun with your new life!

Hypnotherapy is an idea based upon hypnotism. While the terminology was largely founded in the late 19th century, the practice has been around since ancient times. The goal of hypnotherapy is to target subconscious desires and behaviors either to strengthen them or to weaken them.

In the case of cigarette smoking, hypnotherapists often focus on either decreasing the urges associated with desire to smoke, or strengthening your will to quit smoking. There are many ways they can do this, such as associating disgust with the act of inhaling tobacco smoke.

How Well does Hypnotherapy Work?

For those who have been unsucessful quitting ‘cold turkey’ style, hypnotherapy has provided mixed results. Many find it works effectively for a while, but then they relapse later on. Still others are able to attend only a session or two for complete success in quitting. And there are those who say it has almost no effect at all.

In comparison to other treatments, hypnotherapy does offer advantages.

Vs Cold Turkey – Hypnotherapy strengthens your already existing desire to quit and/or weakens your desire to smoke

Vs (any kind of) Medication – Hypnotherapy is almost certainly safer and often more effective at addressing your emotional factors.

Vs Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) – The same as above – hypnotherapy is safer and usually more effective because it addresses the emotional factors thoroughly.

Different methods of delivery for hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy can be delivered via different methods. The most common method is to visit a hypnotherapist several times and then listen to an audio recording at home when you go to sleep. This method has the advantage of reduced cost, but some find it less effective than simply attending a hypnotherapist until they quit. Other methods are entirely DIY (do it yourself), relying on a combination of audio and written material. These can be effective if you have strong willpower.

Like any other therapy, hypnotherapy depends a great deal on your desire to quit. If you don’t strongly feel like quitting, there will not be much emotion associated with quitting to strengthen. This often occurs in those people who see cigarettes as a coping mechanism. In those cases, it is better to figure out what you are trying to compensate for with smoking, and to find a better, healthier alternative to cigarettes (and yes – there definitely is one).

Most of us who smoke are aware of Nicotine Replacement Therapy, or NRT, in some form. This quit smoking aid is currently the most common next to simply quitting ‘cold turkey’ (without any aids or programs). NRT currently includes a wide range of delivery products, including skin patches, chewing gum, sublingual (under the tongue) tablets, lozenges, inhalers, nasal spray, and even nicotine enhanced bottled drinking water!

With all these products, the intention is to deliver nicotine to your body at approximately one-half to one-quarter the rate of a cigarette. Then, over time, you gradually reduce the dosage until you no longer feel ‘addicted’ to the nicotine. At this point, your chances of successfully having quit smoking are approximately 6%, or about double cold turkey.

Obviously, skepticism regarding this most common treatment method is warranted, judging by the numbers. While usually not very cost prohibitive, continued use of these products does add up over time. Also, you will continue to endure the side effects of nicotine consumption during use, albeit milder. And the chances of quitting are not significantly better than your use of ‘willpower’ alone. There is also a probability that you will remain addicted to nicotine, or even smoke during the program.. which could lead to a nicotine overdose. Finally, there is usually no attempt made to address the actual ‘habit formation’ by your emotions with these methods.. which we all know tends to be stronger than the drug addiction itself.

Today we have enough information available to make the wisest choice possible regarding the method we choose to quit smoking. Sometimes the status quo is not the best idea.

When we finally decide to quit smoking, one of the first things on our minds is how to deal with cigarette cravings. There’s a good reason for this – nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs in the world. More so than even heroine and cocaine! On top of the chemical dependence that we all form, there is the psychological addiction. This is essentially the emotional habit we form of learning to depend on a cigarette for a (false) sense of relief from some perceived stressor.

Today, there are more products available to quit smoking than ever. As cravings are your greatest obstacle to quitting, it is natural that most of these products focus most on this aspect. Unfortunately, many fail in their design – sometimes even making it worse. The two key ingredients in cigarette cravings are:

1. Nicotine Addiction and Chemical Dependence

The first problem we usually encounter when quitting is nicotine withdrawal. 15 minutes after our last cigarette, our nicotine blood level starts declining, and we begin cravings again. 40 minutes after our last cigarette, nicotine levels in our brain have totally diminished. As such, most of us go about an hour without a cigarette.

When we quit, cravings and withdrawal symptoms gradually increase for about 3 days, at which time they peak. Cravings then remain steady anywhere from 2 weeks up to a month.

Symptoms of nicotine withdrawal include:

• Intense cigarette cravings (obviously)
• Anxiety
• Irritability and similar intense emotions
• Headache and Nausea
• Trouble with focusing and sleeping, drowsiness
• Appetite Increase (due to blood sugar changes)

2. Psychological Addiction

A much more complex problem, and where many ‘quit smoking aids’ fail totally in their approach, is with our psychological addiction. This is the one that can cause a successful quitter of 10 years to pick up one cigarette and start chain smoking again. The problem is emotional dependence on a substance to alleviate stress.

In our youth, many of us began smoking under peer pressure of some type. It was cool, we fit in, we appeared ‘more mature’. As time passed, life went on, we ‘learned’ to cope with some of our stress and problems by ‘lighting up’. The feeling of instant relief brought by a cigarette puff tricked our brain into believing it made us feel better about problems we thought we couldn’t do anything about. Years of this habit forms very strong emotional and physical memories in our neural pathways. We never really forget them, but they fade as time passes.

Many of us find psychological addiction more powerful than nicotine. We can get through the chemical dependence by distracting ourselves in some manner. But ‘unlearning’ to reach for a cigarette when we want to feel better is much more difficult – especially if we struggle with heavy life stress or depression issues.

Any successful quit therefore depends upon addressing all factors involved in cigarette smoking.

It seems like achieving most good things in life require bearing a heavy burden. There’s probably a reason for this right? And like it or not, cigarettes are no exception to the rule. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms are many and varied. Wouldn’t you like to know about the most common ones? Here’s a frank discussion of them:

1. Does this make you mad? – Emotional Disturbance

This is probably the most well known symptom of quitting and nicotine withdrawal. And how does it usually manifest? That’s right – your going to be pissed off. Of course, the effects aren’t simply limited to increased agitation. They affect the whole pallet of emotions, including anxiety, anger, irritability, impatience, restlessness, sadness, even fear.

It’s nice the tobacco companies have this built in defense in the unlikely case we should decide to stop donating them our life and money – isn’t it?

2. What Time is it? – Distorted Sense of Time.

The title says it all.. well, almost. In reality, minutes will seem like hours. Especially those few minutes which occur immediately after exposure to an old nicotine ‘trigger’. This is a time, place, event, object, or anything else which you previously associated with smoking. After a meal, after a shower, after a party, etc. Your brain will literally dilate time and make you think the craving lasts much longer than it does. A stop watch, distractions, and/or meditation can help tremendously with this – as does a good quit smoking program that addresses your psychological triggers.

3. Brain Fog? – Impaired Concentration.

Your not imagining it – and its (hopefully) not because you are intoxicated with alcohol. Nicotine interferes with your ability to concentrate in several ways. It directly stimulates brain and nervous cells – and you perceive its absence only minutes after your last puff.

Indirectly, nicotine causes a loss of focus when you experience anxiety after quitting. In the presence of an old trigger, your body will release a host of ‘fight or flight’ byproduct chemicals that consequently lower your concentration. Without a cigarette, you have to either ‘wait it out’ or find another way to calm yourself.

Nicotine also alters your blood sugar levels. After quitting you can easily become famished if you don’t practice good eating habits. Blood sugar must be maintained by eating at least 3 healthy meals throughout the day, and snacks will help.

Again, any proper quit smoking aid should help you reverse anxiety inducing triggers, help you be more calm, and assist with dietary choices to reduce blood sugar related withdrawal symptoms.

4. I’m too tired to sleep! – Exhaustion and Insomnia

Last but definitely not least on our list of common symptoms are the mutually occurring feelings of exhaustion and insomnia. Anyone knows feeling too tired to sleep is one of the worst things in the world – when you can’t even get away in your dreams you’re really in for a bad day. Smokers tend to know this feeling all too well. All of the previous symptoms including emotional disturbance, time distortion, and metabolic issues (blood sugar, brain metabolism) contribute in a major way to disturbing our sleep time. Our body could take weeks to re-adjust to normal levels – which really is incredible when you’ve been smoking for years. Of course, any time sleep is disturbed, you will feel more tired during the day. Changes in metabolism, blood sugar, and other systems will also increase your feeling of day time fatigue.

Exercise, naps, and extended sleeping periods can all help to alleviate symptoms. Unfortunately, high caffeine and alcohol intake also tend to go along with smoking, and these will need to be eliminated entirely to prevent sleep disturbance.

Without assistance, exhaustion and insomnia usually begin to subside after a couple of weeks. By this time, almost all nicotine is gone from our system and our body has re-adjusted. A program containing exercise, dietary changes, supplements, and psychological rehabilitation can help to reduce both the time this takes and the suffering tremendously, however, so you might find its worth the small cost in the long run. It will also reduce the chances that you will relapse in the future, wasting all that effort and further crushing your belief in yourself.

When you finally decide to quit smoking you’ll quickly realize many changes in your life will be necessary. During the process, your body encounters many physiological changes. Because the addictive power of cigarettes has multiple sources, it can be very hard to quit. We will soon discover a few exercises which will greatly enhance your chances of quitting successfully.

The first thing you must realize is that when you quit smoking, you must create a schedule of activities to replace your mental habit of ‘lighting up’. These are the moments in your past when you were used to reaching for a cigarette. Whether it was to cure anxiety, relieve boredom, or feel better after eating, the outcome was the same: your mind learned to associate ‘lighting up’ with a feeling of relief from that activity.

How to Kick Your Habit with Exercise

When we talk about exercise, we don’t necessarily mean a full-blown super bodybuilding workout routine. The critical factor is that sure active, doing something physical. Simple physical activities, whether at home or at the gym, will help distract you from lighting up and relief quit smoking symptoms by helping your body recover from previous changes.

The key to a successful exercise program is to form a new habit. You do this by starting slowly, not doing more than you want to at one time. Start with simply walking for 10 minutes a day, or riding a bike around the block. Then as you gradually form a habit, simply increase the amount of exercise you perform. Be careful not to increase too much at one time, or you may ‘burn out’. The goal is to pace yourself.

Exercising with Activity Partners or at the Gym

A great way to form an exercise habit and reduce its mental burden is by finding an activity partner. Finding someone to play tennis with, go hiking with, or other activities will help alleviate boredom and give you both more motivation. If a gym membership is practical, this is a great way to find activity partners and make new friends. It’s easy – even if you are an introvert, you simply start doing something at the gym and others will naturally come up to you and want to join in. You don’t even have to ask.

Your Biggest Obstacle When Exercising

The biggest reason that so many people fail to maintain their exercise habits is because they simply start off doing too much. Self-discipline is like a water well. You only have so much at one time. The more of it that you use up at once, the less likely you’ll be able to repeat that activity. So the key is to build up over time.

When you first quit smoking, you’ll use a lot of self-discipline. This is why starting with a full force exercise program usually results in failure. For most people, it’s simply too much at once. This is why the previous advice of starting off as little as possible is best. Even if it’s only five push-ups a day or five minutes of walking, you are still benefiting because you are still forming a habit. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

When to Exercise During Your Day

For most people, the best time to exercise is in the morning. You won’t be tired from working yet. Remember the self-discipline principle? If you are already worn out from working, you will be much less likely to want to exercise. Another reason is because of your biological clock. Cigarettes alter your circadian rhythms and your sleep patterns. Exercising early in the day helps your body to restore its natural rhythm. Exercising at night will excite you and most likely make sleeping more difficult.

Five More Tips to Quit Smoking

As promised, here are five more tips to help you stop smoking. Because of the emotional habits formed by smoking, many of us have specific weaknesses. These include things like coffee, being bored, being lonely, and being stressed out. These are called triggers – things which make us want to light up a cigarette to relieve anxiety (or think we are relieving it, as we really aren’t – cigarettes are a stimulant).

1. Avoid Coffee, Soda Pop, and Caffeinated Sugary Beverages

Caffeine and sugar are stimulants. Because of the effects of nicotine on your bodies hormones and blood sugar levels, these things are especially harmful to you. They make you feel hungry when you’re not, spike your blood pressure, and stimulate you further to anxiety. This will fuel your cravings tremendously. Avoid them. Instead drink water, juice, caffeine free tea, or other healthful beverages.

2. Don’t Sit Around Bored.

The best tool you have to avoid cigarette cravings is the distraction of physical activity. It helps on many levels: normalizing your blood sugar, increasing serotonin, balancing hormones, mentally engaging you, helping your lungs. It will only be moments before your cigarette cravings will fade. They last only briefly, the trouble is we usually can’t stop thinking about them during this time. Physical activity will distract us from these thoughts. Play a sport. Clean your house. Wash your car. Play Nintendo Wii. Call someone on your cell phone and walk to the park. Offer to help a neighbor. The more physically and mentally engaging your activity is, the less likely you will feel any cravings for cigarettes.

3. Replenish Your ‘Well of Self-Discipline’ By Having Fun

For many of us, putting smoking is the hardest task we could ever face in life. It is a significant drain on our self-discipline. As we discussed previously, are self-discipline is like a water well. We only have so much at one time. But we can replenish it by having fun. Go to the theater. Walk around a fun store. If you like sports and have friends to play them with do so. Go to a state park. Go sightseeing in your car. Anything that you can think of that you like to do. It does not have the cost a lot of money, just get creative. Gradually, as you use up and replace your self-discipline, the size of your ‘well’ will increase.

4. Be Around Friends, Find Company, Join a Support Group, Just Get Social

A big trigger when you quit smoking is loneliness. Counter this by finding people you can be around. You will be happier, not lonely, and more motivated to avoid cravings. Most people will support you in your decision – it will be easy finding support from those you might already know. This can include family in current friends, neighbors, or even coworkers. Otherwise, you can join a support group, make friends during activities (the gym, the park, ect), or start a small service based side business.

5. Learn New Methods to Cope with and Avoid Stress

Stress is the greatest trigger to your smoking habit. Chances are, 90% of the time when you lit up a cigarette you felt anxious. Learning new ways to deal with your feelings will be critical to your success. It starts with knowing yourself. Know when you feel angry, upset, nervous, or sad and know why. A little bit of quiet time for reflection is all it takes. Then, learn how to control your emotions when you feel bad. Meditation is an excellent way to control anger, nervousness, and other anxiety. Deep breathing techniques work fast to relieve these feelings also, and require much less practice. Exercise and sports have a similar effect, along with providing the extra benefit of a source of positive ‘distraction’ so that you don’t even feel your cravings.

Quitting smoking can be easy. You simply need to learn the right techniques and how to apply them successfully. 90% of the battle is believing – yes, you can.

Many of us today are wondering about quitting smoking. The dangers are more prevalent than ever. Cancer, emphysema, decreased lung capacity, circulation system damage, and more. If you are also considering quitting you are not alone. Following are the most frequently asked questions about quitting smoking.

How long does nicotine remain in your system?

About 40 minutes after your last cigarette, your brain becomes the first part of your body to be free of nicotine. Other parts of your body are not so lucky. Small residual amounts of nicotine stay within your system for several weeks. Several factors including how much you smoke, your body weight, your activity level, and diet type influence how long it stays.

The question most of us are really interested in is: how long will my withdrawal symptoms last? Well withdrawal symptoms usually peak within about three days. Then they steadily decrease for a period of up to two weeks – about the same time it takes nicotine to fully leave your body. Fortunately, your body recovers quickly and critical systems start balancing themselves after only a few days. This includes your hormones, insulin production, and brain chemicals.

Is it possible to quit smoking without weight gain?

The short answer is – yes. However, it may not be so easy as this implies. This is because the chemicals which influence your appetite have been unbalanced by years of smoking. Also, you’ve become used to the idea of relieving your anxiety by lighting a cigarette. The accommodation of these two things means that we are much more likely to form a habit of eating to comfort ourselves emotionally. This works because eating causes our brain to release endorphins while also spiking your blood sugar. Hence you feel better, but you are eating unnecessary calories.

The way to avoid this problem is to simply replace the habit of eating for emotional comfort with a more healthy activity. Instead of eating, you could go for a walk, go to the movies, chew a stick of gum, converse with a friend, drink water, or anything similar which takes your mind off of eating and smoking.

Why do I want to quit smoking?

The best reason we could ever have for putting smoking is because we care about ourselves and our friends around us. Unfortunately many smokers also suffer from depression and as such reasons like this may not be first in their mind. If you are struggling with depression, you could make quitting smoking much more difficult. Hence, this is a separate issue you should treat first.

You really will feel a lot better as time passes after you quit. No matter how much we want to think cigarettes help us in some way right now, reality is they always make the situation much worse in a not so obvious way while we’re using them. In addition to mental benefits, and will also live longer and healthier when the body has a chance to repair damage cause by years of smoking. Risk of stroke, heart attack, and terminal cancer is significantly reduced.

Perhaps the most obvious reason to quit smoking is because it’s so damned expensive. We literally burned $30-$50 a carton on a weekly basis for years. Taxes only make this worse, and we quickly find ourselves spending hundreds of dollars every month. The organizations who take your money and your life are some of the worst violators of peace and prosperity in our society. Lets stop surrendering our lives to them.

What method to quit smoking is best?

The answer to this question starts with knowing yourself. Millions of parts have been created to supply the quit smoking demand. While statistically some of these products are better than others, what works best for you may not be what works best for everyone else. A few of us believe strongly in going ‘ cold turkey’ – quitting all at once without aid. Many more have found systems like hypnosis, NLP (Neuro- linguistic programming), and herbal remedies to help with side effects. The most common systems offer nicotine replacement as therapy, however you should be aware that many people simply end up addicted to the replacement nicotine. Also, prescription treatments such as these often carry their own negative side effects.

Whatever your choice, the best system is one that focuses on both your emotional habits and the symptoms of withdrawal. For this reason, NLP combined with herbal supplementshas become very popular as a modern option.

Just remember that the most important component of quitting smoking is believing in yourself. This is 90% of the battle of almost anything in life – and always the most difficult task.

“Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turnin’ red
Cryin’s not for me
‘Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’
Because I’m free
Nothin’s worryin’ me“