Boosting your odds you'll quit smoking this time....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-18-2012

My wife and I recently got some great service from a man who suddenly had a short spell of a dry cough that is typical from throat irritation.

He said it was because he smoked.

I started to tell him of my great experiences with how effective Thayer’s Slippery Elm Lozenges were to turn off that kind of cough but our business with him cut that off.

So, I got his card and emailed him the information on Thayer’s.

And, I also asked if he wanted any info from me on quitting smoking successfully.

He replied his doctor had a plan for him to quit that it sounded like he might try.

I decided to email him back a really short summary of tips for making that try succeed.

He hadn’t asked for the whole elephant and likely needed something short and easy to do for him to do at all as busy as he is with his work.

So I sent him this:

“Sounds good!

Here's a few things to add to your doctor's plan.:

1.  Add some exercise even if it's just lifting light weights twice a week at the gym for 25 minutes and a few 5 minute walks occasionally during the week and on weekends. Fit them in first thing in the morning before your day gets busy if you can.  Doing that makes it easier to get to and stay with.

Eat more of some kind of yellow or orange or dark green vegetables and other nonstarchy vegetables.  Sweet potatoes, acorn squash, and carrots and broccoli if you can.  Cauliflower also works.  So does coleslaw.  You likely enjoy some more than others.  Eat those and the others less often.

People who do either are more successful at quitting.  People who do both are even more successful at quitting.  And, people who do both gain less weight when they quit.   (Weight Watchers works as if needed also.  They've upgraded to recommend vegetables and exercise more than they once did also.)

2.  Take 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day since it helps get rid of and recover from the effects of the smoking.  Eating the vegetables also does that and all of them have anticancer effects too.

3.  Plan out a future you would enjoy if you stay healthy.  It's just like sales, aim for success.  People who do that are more successful at quitting.  They are more future oriented.

4.  Between now and your last cigarette, ONLY light them with matches.  The hot flame of lighters makes the smoke five times more harmful.

5.  You've learned not to smoke around clients in your office.  Just do the same for yourself the rest of the time!

Hope it works for you!

This is just a bit more than half a page summarizing some of the best research on how to quit smoking successfully.

So, if you are trying to quit or you know someone who is who needs that kind of short summary with easy to start things to do, by all means use it yourself or feel totally free to cut and paste and email it to the person you know IF they OK you doing so. 

Asking them first, “Can I email you a half page summary of the latest research on how to quit successfully?” will likely get a yes if they have any shot at succeeding or making a real effort to quit.

If not, don’t send it as it wouldn’t help.  But most people trying to quit at all and who are even somewhat serious will say yes.

THEN email it to them and the odds they’ll use some of it or all of it go way up!

And, here’s my comments on each part in case you want a bit more info for any reason:

1.  Add some exercise even if it's just lifting light weights twice a week at the gym for 25 minutes and a few 5 minute walks occasionally during the week and on weekends. Fit them in first thing in the morning before your day gets busy if you can.  Doing that makes it easier to get to and stay with.

Comments.  Doing a lot more than this for a smoker who has not been exercising at all might be risky.  But just doing this much regularly slams open the door to eventually doing a lot more as they build up to it.  Also, they’ll learn they CAN do it and will think more in terms of protecting their health.  People who exercise in the first part of the morning exercise more consistently and are more than twice as likely to keep exercising.  And, people who strength train even with tiny weights feel empowered and their self esteem goes up even in the first two or three weeks.  So this advice is far more powerful than it might look.

Eat more of some kind of yellow or orange or dark green vegetables and other nonstarchy vegetables.  Sweet potatoes, acorn squash, and carrots and broccoli if you can.  Cauliflower also works.  So does coleslaw.  You likely enjoy some more than others.  Eat those and the others less often.

Comment:  These vegetables each and every one tend to help people lose fat and keep it off. And each one helps prevent cancer.  Most people like sweet potatoes or coleslaw at least some.  And some people who can’t make themselves eat broccoli will eat cauliflower.  Eating more of these makes it much easier to eat less junk food and packaged snacks and desserts.  Doing that also helps undo the damage and lower their heart attack risk.  And, if they do this at all, they will think more in terms of protecting their health which also makes quitting more likely the research finds.

People who do either are more successful at quitting.  People who do both are even more successful at quitting.  And, people who do both gain less weight when they quit.   (Weight Watchers works as if needed also.  They've upgraded to recommend vegetables and exercise more than they once did also.)

Comment:  Many people won’t quit because they fear it will cause them to become fatter.  And others who quit successfully do gain enough fat, they restart smoking anyway.  So letting them know that the things they can do to make quitting easier help prevent this, makes them using those two things more likely.  And, even when people know there is an escape if they need one, they are more likely to try the action.  And, some people will gain more than they want and try Weight Watchers.  But they’ll do that instead of restarting smoking!  This is particularly important because recent research found people DO tend to gain over 10 pounds or even up to 19 pounds when they quit.

2.  Take 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day since it helps get rid of and recover from the effects of the smoking.  Eating the vegetables also does that and all of them have anticancer effects too.

Comment:  As you know if you read my posts for both preventing cancer and heart disease, there are big lists of effective things you can do to do each one.  But this is like the exercise advice.  Someone brand new to the subject and not up to doing a lot will make a start they can build on by just doing this.  Again, if they do it, they reinforce the picture of themselves as health oriented and their chances of quitting go up even more. 

Also studies show that this kind of advice is more effective than scaring them badly with how dreadful the effects are of smoking in many people who smoke now.  The dreadful effects are real enough. But the focus is on helping them escape initially.  Later, finding out how tobacco causes cancer several ways and is dramatically more dangerous for their heart than the cancers it can cause might help them stay off.  But for many smokers to start, this much easier to do beginning is more likely to work.

3.  Plan out a future you would enjoy if you stay healthy.  It's just like sales, aim for success.  People who do that are more successful at quitting.  They are more future oriented.

Comment:  He was in sales before his previous job and still works with the salespeople in his current job.  So that comment connects the idea to something he already knows and believes.  But everyone has some idea of what they would like to do later in life if they stay healthy.  Simply thinking about that briefly focuses them on creating a good future.  And doing so even some, makes them far more likely to succeed at quitting smoking research found.

4.  Between now and your last cigarette, ONLY light them with matches.  The hot flame of lighters makes the smoke five times more harmful.

Comment:  This is quite true particularly for the risk of cancer and lung cancer due to the many highly carcinogenic compounds in the hotter smoke caused by using a lighter.  Most doctors don’t know this one.  But the curve of lung cancer incidence and the gradual increase in lighter use is so highly correlated and similar, they look like the SAME curve as indeed they very probably are!  Those same compounds likely help cause the excess inflammation of the blood vessels that cause heart disease as well.

5.  You've learned not to smoke around clients in your office.  Just do the same for yourself the rest of the time!

Comment:  If he feels like he cannot not smoke, this reminds him he already manages not to smoke for his job and that if the extends what he already can do to protect himself also, he has a real shot at quitting using something he already knows he can do.