Today many people will quit smoking – why & how to join them....

Today's Post: Thursday, 11-18-2010

Many people successfully quit smoking every day. So no matter when you read this, today can be a day YOU can do the same.

But if you read this on Thursday, 11-18-2010 & quit even for just 24 hours initially, you will have LOTS of extra company.

Today is the Great American Smokeout, an annual event since 1977.

This post is in three parts:

1. Why to quit. (The harm from smokers is far more certain and harsh than most smokers even have a beginning clue about.)

2. New information on how to quit successfully from an earlier post.

3. And, some added information that can also be helpful in quitting.

1. Why quit smoking:

Most smokers have heard that some smokers get lung cancer from it.

But few know more than that. So they think that they will be one of the smokers who don’t get it and keep smoking. On that subject they have a point. Even among heavy smokers, only 25 % of them get lung cancer. That means that 75% don’t.

Of course that’s a bit like playing Russian Roulette with a four shot revolver with one bullet.

But some smokers do miss lung cancer.

The problem is that the reality of smoking is dramatically worse and much more certain than that.

Even though smoking DOES cause lung cancer and about 30 % of every other kind of cancer too, cancer is the LITTLE problem from smoking!

Every single cigarette smoked or exposure to second hand smoke begins to give you heart disease and increases your rate of aging.


It gets even worse than that. Once it gives you heart disease, exposure to tobacco smoke, we recently found out, also TRIGGERS heart attacks even in people who otherwise would not have gotten them.

This means smoking is so harmful, it literally harms people who just began smoking and those who only smoke 3 or 4 cigarettes a day or are only exposed to second hand smoke a few hours every week.

For example, teens who smoke who get their lung function checked have the result show they breathe about as well as healthy nonsmokers who are MUCH older.

For another example, I recently found this quote, “….secondhand smoke causes an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths in the United States each year.” This shows that smoking is nearly FOURTEEN times more likely to harm or kill you with heart disease as it is with lung cancer!

So stop smoking ASAP and stay away as much as you can from second hand smoke.


2. My earlier post with some ways to mulitply your chances of success in quitting smoking.:

If you're quitting smoking this year, this new information will help....

Today's Post: Monday, 1-18-2010

You or someone you know may be trying to quit smoking this year. If so, some really useful new information that can double your chances of success, or much more, just came to my attention.

You may have a friend who smoked and who died from a heart attack recently and not want to have that happen to you.

Or, you may have had a heart attack you survived & your doctor let you know that if you quit smoking, your chances of avoiding another heart attack or surviving the next one if you have it would both go up.

Or you may have realized how much you spend on cigarettes and would like to do something more constructive with all that money each month.

Or you may have read the info we posted on in this blog before that 25% of heavy smokers do get lung cancer and decided you would do something to avoid that happening to you!

No matter what your motivation, there are a whole list of things we now know to multiply your chances of success. Doing them in combination can work wonders for you.

I recently found an article in a newspaper section that came with the ads & sales flyers called,
spryliving.com , & it was in their January, 2010 issue.

I'd known that the best strategy for most people is to try an attempt first to quit cold turkey. If it works for you, you're done.

If the side effects keep you from staying off, the best fall back method is to get both a prescription for Zyban, the safer & more desirable of the 2 drugs for this purpose I think, that replaces the exact kind of antidepressant effect that nicotine has PLUS use a short acting and an as needed fast acting nicotine replacement.

But regardless of whether you stop cold turkey on your own or after you see the doctor and get the prescriptions, this article had two extremely valuable keys to success.

The Zyban, the nicotine replacement, and doing regular exercise even if it's light moderate -- all, each of them separately, just about double your odds of quitting.

What this article had that was so valuable is that:

Beginning the methods on this list you'll use and using them regularly for two weeks before your quit date ALSO doubles your chance of success!!

Two, I'd already known that doing regular exercise while quitting doubled your chances of success by itself. But this article had WHY this works! It seems that just like the Zyban and the nicotine replacements do, regular exercise turns down nicotine cravings!

1. So, you have a decent shot at quitting without the doctor's help if you use an over the counter nicotine replacement like a nicotine patch and do regular exercise for 2 weeks before your quit date. Between using both the nicotine replacement AND the regular exercise even if it's just a slow walk of 10 minutes 6 or 7 days a week - AND the 2 week head start - you will multiply your chance of success on your first pass by up to an almost unbelievable EIGHT times.

(You can add a fast-acting nicotine replacement after your quit date also -- such as an over the counter nicotine replacement like nicotine gum.)

2. Even better, if your high probability of success try on your own effort doesn't quite work, you've already begun the regular exercise & experienced using a nicotine replacement. Just continue them until you see the doctor. Then after you do, add the Zyban or the nicotine replacements your doctor has found to work best for another 2 weeks again before you try to quit the second time.

You are now using FOUR methods that each double your chances of success, the two week lead in time before you quit, the regular exercise, the nicotine replacement AND the Zyban. That gives you up to a totally amazing SIXTEEN times better chance at success!

3. Other tips.:

a) If you are already doing regular exercise, take it a bit easy, but do it as regularly as you can each week. Doing it that regularly provides the leverage you need.

And, since you have been smoking and more intense exercise has been found to boost blood pressure even after you finish each session in smokers, until you recover from the effects of your previous smoking, hold off trying to do more or a lot more in terms of intensity until a few weeks after you quit. And, then build up very gradually for awhile.

b) Consider taking other supplements that have antidepressant effects or help combat the heart disease and cancer causing effects of the smoking.

Taking 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 has reversed seasonal depression, SAD. Even better, it has been shown to protect your heart about that well too.

Taking purified fish oil, Omega 3, and DHA supplements has been found to both reverse mild depression but ALSO lower triglycerides and help prevent the more dangerous rhythm problems in heart attacks that make them more likely to be fatal. So taking those supplements will help prevent both heart attacks and fatal heart attacks plus you'll feel better too.

(Both vitamin D3 & these omega 3 oils also each have other health benefits.)

If you take the vitamin D3 AND take turmeric or curcumin supplements you are also less likely to get most cancers. (Curcumin is the main active ingredient in turmeric.) And, if you like curried food or that spice on other dishes, eat that more often. The yellow color in curry spice is from the turmeric they contain.

If your LDL cholesterol is high, you can also lower that to protect your heart and without taking drugs by taking sterols such as beta sitosterol.

So, by taking these supplements as you quit and right after, you improve your chances of success both at quitting and at avoiding the health problems you are quitting to hopefully prevent!

These new methods give you an excellent shot at quitting successfully.

By all means try them!

3. For some people, they may be better off quitting right now while they are ready instead of planning a quit date. That’s because they may not feel like it later.

Others, who virtually always do what they plan to do as scheduled no matter what, might do better to cut down just a bit and begin a relatively easy consistent exercise program for the two weeks before they try to quit.

Either way, it will at least double your chances of success if you make sure to exercise after you quit. Just take it easy at first and increase slowly after that.

The other thing that you can use to quit successfully I hadn’t yet seen that ALSO probably at least doubles your chances of quitting is how you think when you decide whether or not to smoke after you quit.

Some people who were addicted to too many sweets and got fat successfully lose the fat and some don’t.

The ones who think about how much they would enjoy having a sugary treat and nothing else tend to keep eating them and either never lose the fat or always gain it back.

But the discovery is that this is avoidable! The people who learn to think first and most about the consequences of eating the sugary treat, almost always pass. They succeed in losing the fat and in keeping it off.

The research shows they use the command center of their brains instead of the appetite centers. Since the command part is better informed, smarter, and – if activated, is in control, this isn’t even that hard once you learn to do it every time.

In smoking, it would go something like this,

“I feel rotten and stressed, if I smoked this cigarette, I’d likely feel better.”

That tends to lead to re-starting smoking.

But it’s just as easy but with far different results to think:

“I feel rotten and stressed, if I smoked this cigarette, I’d likely feel better. But if I do, one day I’ll have a heart attack or a cancer and won’t even feel this good.

Feeling rotten is temporary and if I decide I need to, I can get a prescription for Zyban to turn feeling bad down until it stops – or I can get some nicotine gum and use that.”

You may even think, “Nope, I’d like to feel better sooner. But it isn’t bad enough to go to that much work to get rid of.”

Learning to think this way, always looking at consequences BEFORE deciding, works very effectively.

I can vouch for this personally.

There are many treats that I used to eat that were fattening. Before I knew any better, I’d often decide whether or not to have one only on whether or not I like that kind of treat. If I liked it, I ate it.

Now I know better and am also working on getting the fat off my belly, I think differently.

I look at the label first or now know what likely would be on the label if there was one.

Does it have high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners or flavors? Does it have any real foods besides the refined grains and sugar? Does it have junk oils like soy or corn or cottonseed oil? Does it have any “partially hydrogenated’ vegetable oils?

Has it been a LONG time since I had a sweet treat? Or did I just allow myself to have one yesterday?

Only if a food gets by both of these screens do I eat any at all most of the time.

I still love sweets just as much as I used to.

But now I know the health consequences of eating the ingredients and have a strong motivation not to have even OK sweet treats too often, these thoughts shut the door on my eating any at all 98 % of the time.

Thinking similarly, can be an enormous help in quitting smoking.