Stop Smoking And Antidepressant – How To Subdue The Habit

October 16, 2009 by StopSmokingGuidelines  
Filed under Stop Smoking Hypnosis

There aren’t that many medically inclined people in the United States, and there are even doctors and medical practitioners who smoke rather extensively. The thing is, many smokers don’t have a clue as to why they smoke, and they don’t care, because the experience seems so cool and smooth, and they seem to derive so much pleasure from it.

The fact is that the nicotine in tobacco acts as a stimulant that contributes in a huge way to the addiction to cigarette smoking. It enters the bloodstream and promotes the flow of adrenaline, which is a stimulating hormone. Amongst other things, it speeds up the heartbeat to an irregular pace that raises blood pressure and reduces the appetite. Although this may cause nausea and vomiting, another related substance also in the tobacco appears to destroy an important brain enzyme known as monoamine oxidase B, otherwise known as MAO B. It is an enzyme that breaks down excess amounts of the dopamine neurotransmitter in your system. With no MAO B to control its secretion, the excess dopamine, which triggers pleasure-seeking behavior, begins to work overtime to make you want to smoke again. And that is where the craving for cigarette or nicotine comes from.

Experiments have shown that habitual smokers have seriously decreased levels of MAO B and abnormally high levels of dopamine, encouraging them to seek the pleasure of more tobacco smoke. When the smoker cannot have a cigarette, dopamine ejected into their system is accompanied by serotonin, and causes them to experience the severe withdrawal symptoms of irritability, headaches, nausea, anxiety, and of course, the stronger desire for more and more tobacco. Basically, these symptoms are identical to those of depression, which is why some forms of antidepressant medications can be used in treatments for smoking cessation. Researchers have found that depressed people essentially have the same altered levels of neurotransmitters in their bodies, and too little activity among neurotransmitters in the areas of the brain that control mood and emotion will certainly result in the same indicators.

There are different types of antidepressants, and they interact with your neurotransmitters in different ways. They can change the rate at which the neurotransmitters are either created or broken down by the body, or block the process by which neurotransmitters are recycled and reused. They can block the re-absorption of neurotransmitters into the nerve cells and thereby leave some available to trigger activity among nerve cells, or they can interfere with the binding of a neurotransmitter to neighboring nerve cells, thus leaving the neurotransmitter available for other bodily functions.

Specifically to help smokers trying to quit the habit, MAO inhibitors are ideal because they decrease the rate at which neurotransmitters are broken down by the body so they are more available to interact with nerve cells, or neurons. In the United States, you can get prescriptions for such MAO inhibitors as phenelzine and tranylcypromine from most mental health professionals, especially when they are convinced that your condition is sufficiently critical. To regulate the levels of serotonin, you may have to take serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors such as venlafaxine or the more common bupropion, sold as Wellbutrin.

Stop smoking antidepressant medications are ideal because they help you bide the rough tide and stay focused while you are trying to quit smoking. Once you are past the withdrawal phase, you should discontinue the treatment.

Atlanta Smoking Stop Tip – Five Simple Tips To Help You Quit Smoking

October 2, 2009 by StopSmokingGuidelines  
Filed under Stop Smoking Hypnosis

There are a lot of things that make it difficult for most people to quit smoking, and they are hardly the same for any two people who are trying to break the habit. However, it is critical for you to know precisely what it is that affects your ability to abstain from the substance, so that you can better save yourself and save your future by smoking cessation. Below you will find a number of helpful tips to help you quit smoking, and you had better take them into advisement so that you can use them to your own personal advantage.

For starters, you want to pick up another hobby, something distracting. When you are very busy, you often don’t have time to go out and get a cigarette. Many people trying to quit smoking often opt for cooking and eating, especially women who find that it is easier for them to do that than anything else. As a result, it is common to find a stop smoking patient packing on the pounds. Instead, you may want to try picking up some new exercises and starting a daily workout regimen. You may end up too exhausted to smoke by the end of each day.

It helps if you are able to think of the many reasons why you need to stop smoking. Think of the harm you are doing to yourself by smoking, think of the health benefits you will gain when you don’t smoke anymore; think of the loose change you get to keep for better expenditure instead of wasting it on packs of cigarette, and remember that your health insurance premiums lower each month you live without smoking. For a fact, your life can only get longer and healthier because you are not smoking anymore; the more you remember that, the better your chances of staying nicotine free.

You may not know it, and you may never have realized, but smoking is a kind of stress response. Most people who start smoking do so because of peer pressure or curiosity, but shortly afterward, they are addicted because cigarette smoking has a soothing or calming effect. As a result, they return to tobacco when they need to handle their stress patterns. To help yourself, find another place in which to let off your steam, and another manner too. A massage has always been known to help rather well in this regard, as are a number of other relaxation techniques that help to get your mind off your problems.

It helps if you have a close nonsmoking friend with you most of the time; they’ll be able to check you everytime you reach for a cigarette. Better still, you should inform everyone around you that you are trying to stop smoking so that they’ll know what to do in case you start to break your own rules, and so that they can encourage you. Added to that, you will likely find it hard and embarrassing to smoke to their face when they know that you are not supposed to smoke.

Smoking fosters dehydration so counter it by drinking a lot of water. A friend told me that drinking water and smoking never go together, so if you make a conscious effort to stop smoking by drinking water, you will find it a lot easier to do. It certainly beats having to take all kinds of stop smoking medications or being incarcerated for trying to quit smoking. As long as your smoking cessation is successful in the long run, you have done yourself a great favor.

By Hypnosis Smoking Stop – Applying Hypnosis Technique To Quit Smoking

October 2, 2009 by StopSmokingGuidelines  
Filed under Stop Smoking Hypnosis

There are more techniques that can be used to stop smoking in the world today than I can count off of the fingers and toes of my hands and feet. Many were original conceptions of desperate people who needed to really break the habit before it broke them, and others were hybrid processes, fabricated by professionals who have been in the smoking cessation line of work for long enough to know that combined stop smoking techniques have a greater chance of success with patients than singular ones.

One method by which people can actually stop smoking that has been around for a rather long time is hypnosis or hypnotism. This is the practice of artificially inducing people to questions and suggestions while they are in a heightened state of responsiveness and altered state of consciousness. It has been practiced and perfected for centuries, and lately is has been receiving widespread acceptance both in alternative medicine and in conventional health delivery, especially in psychiatry.

Hypnosis is an induced state of focused attention that is similar to deep relaxation. The exact mechanism of the state of hypnosis remains unknown to most professionals even, but it is a fact that you can learn to focus on specific inner sensations that are positive either under the direction of a clinician or hypnotist, or through self-hypnosis. While this is going on, you can withdraw the attention from negative internal sensations or thoughts, such as pain and anxiety.

So yes, hypnosis has been used extensively to treat a variety of physiological and behavioral problems in the past. In modern day, it has been found that physicians can help alleviate back pain and pain resulting from burns and cancer through hypnotism. It is used to help patients achieve self-control over conditions such as drug and cigarette addiction, acute and chronic pain, and an array of psychological conditions, including sleep onset insomnia and depression.

Although there is still much controversy surrounding the use of medicine in treating patients, the results that are obtained by such treatments can hardly be denied. Since smoking is as much a physical problem as it is a psychological one, hypnosis can be employed to help smokers break the destructive because it does treat physical problems that have psychological components.

Some doctors help their patients stop smoking by relying on a placebo effect, but researchers have over time demonstrated that the benefits of hypnosis far outweigh the effects of a placebo, tending to from changing the focus of attention. Although few general practitioners include hypnosis as part of their practice, there is little question that it works.

As a result, you may want to look around your area for a hypnotist that can help you with your smoking problem. You should have no difficulty finding one because these days they are listed everywhere you care to look. On the Internet, in the yellow pages, and just about every referral you can find, a hypnotist is sure to be listed. You never again have to live with the behavioral difficulty that is cigarette smoking or addiction to tobacco.