There are a whole lot of negative health effects of smoking. It kills lung cells and damages the cilia in your upper airways, leaving you exposed to infection. Nicotine in tobacco causes your arteries to constrict, thus reducing blood flow to your hands and feet. Smoking deprives the body of oxygen, forcing your heart to work harder to reach every part of you, most of the time leading to coronary heart disease or chronic airway obstruction.

But we are not done yet; research shows that smoker mothers more frequently birth premature or underweight babies that are at increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome. Almost every kind of cancer that there is are either worsened by smoking, or caused by it because of the toxic and carcinogenic compounds found in cigarette, pipe, and cigar smoke. Cancers of the mouth, throat, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus are more common in smokers than in others, as are emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.

Why?

Explorative studies have found that the smoke from burning tobacco destroys the critical brain enzyme monoamine oxidase B, or MAO B, which is vital for breaking down excess dopamine in your system. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that triggers pleasure-seeking behavior, an excess of which encourage you to seek the pleasure of more tobacco smoke” and nicotine. Did I mention that nicotine is one of 4000 some chemicals in tobacco, 43 of which are known to be carcinogenic? And nicotine is totally poisonous too, as much as it is additive.

Even nonsmokers who inhale the environmental tobacco smoke, ETS that you puff out are at risk from smoking. Surprise! ETS also contains all the toxic agents in regular smoke, and up to 3000 thousand people who die from lung cancer each year got it not because they smoked but because they were somewhere around you. The same goes for the 35000 who die from heart complications. So, you aren’t just killing yourself, you are also killing the ones you love whom you think are safe because it’s after all ‘your body’.

You have got to know about how your smoking can aggravate asthma, pneumonia, and bronchitis in people around you too, and how it can impair blood circulation. The health effects of smoking are negative all round, yet all that it gives is a phantom relief from tension and a desire to have more and more of it. Really, you have nothing to gain from smoking, so you may as well quit. I’m pretty certain if you were asked to abstain from sex so that your heart does not give out you will cooperate with the doctor. Well, that is the very reason why you need to stop smoking.

One stop smoking technique by which you can break the habit is to take stop smoking pills. Most stop smoking pills aren’t sold over the counter in drugstores, so you usually have to obtain a prescription from a licensed medical practitioner before you can get your hands on them. Most physicians also are wary of prescribing stop smoking pills for smoking cessation patients because the prescriptions tend to have the same nomenclature as antidepressant drugs, which when used wrongly can have a lot of harmful adverse effects.

Perhaps the most popular stop smoking pill in the United States is the antidepressant drug bupropin. It is sold under the brand name Zyban, an oral medication that is used to inhibit the neuronal uptake of dopamine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry communication signals between your nerves and they trigger your pleasure-seeking behavior. When you have too much of them in your system, you keep wanting more of the pleasure that the nicotine seems to provide, so you go back to smoking. With Zyban, you stand better chances of staying off the substance.

Chantix is another oral pill that doctors tend to prescribe for smoking cessation patients. Manufactured by Pfizer, it is FDA-approved and should be used only by adults who are trying to break the habit. Chantix contains varenicline tartrate, which helps to reduce cravings and to deal with withdrawal symptoms as well. Other antidepressants used in the same category are the tretracylcic types that norephinephrine from binding to nearby cells and resulting in reuptake.

When nicotine is drawn into your lungs, it enters into your bloodstream and is pumped into your heart and brain. Although it serves as a nerve stimulant that promotes the flow of adrenaline, it also speeds up your heartbeat and causes it to become irregular. Stopping smoking results in withdrawal symptoms that are often there within 24 to 48 hours, such as irritability, headaches, and anxiety, which is why the antidepressant drugs work well in smoking cessation. They keep your system calm and duplicate some of the effects of nicotine so that you can tide the withdrawal.

The biggest challenge with the smoking cessation pills is that they largely have some side effects that many people are not too comfortable with. Many of them cause blurred vision, dehydration, difficulty urinating, sleeplessness, dizziness, and confusion. A few of the more severe adverse effects of stop smoking pills are nausea, constipation, unusual dreams, hallucination, and even vomiting. For these reasons, doctors may save prescription of pills to people who are trying to stop smoking for a time when they are certain no other technique will work.

Most patients trying to break their smoking habits often focus on clinical stop smoking efforts that work, but that do not quite work for everybody; but the truth is that a lot of diseases and disorders that are associated with smoking arise as a result of imbalances that have been introduced into the body by the chemicals and other substances present in nicotine and tobacco. When the natural balance of your body is hampered, your immune system is suppressed and you are suddenly very susceptible to disease.

Quitting smoking is going to require some hard work on your part, no doubt; but the hard work had better be in the right direction. The best way to quit smoking is to do it the natural way, using natural smoking cessation aids as you find them around you. Below, a few of such aids are outlined for you to peruse and determine if they are adequate for you, or are not.

The best natural way to stop smoking is by distraction. You see, you are addicted because you have been exposed to nicotine for too long, and you keep returning to it because you have the time to think about it. When you are trying to break your smoking habit, you want to get yourself into a lot of activity that keeps your mind off of the cigarettes. When I was trying to stop smoking, I often would spend a lot of time engaging in physical activity that would keep my mind off of it. I could play football, basketball, or even soccer; I actually joined the karate team in my college.

It did not work perfectly all the time, because right after the activity, I would return right to my smoking haunt and knock off a couple of sticks rapidly. However with time, I started to be able to bring myself to where I could sleep immediately afterward. It took months before the technique finally took effect, but it did; and today I am living smoke free.

Another nonmedical smoking cessation aid is drinking a lot of water. Sincerely, I am not sure how this works, but it was recommended to me by a physician. Because nicotine dehydrates you, drinking a lot of water reverses this dehydration and causes you to crave tobacco less, I suppose. Anytime I felt like I totally had to smoke, I grabbed a plastic bottle of water and started to down it gradually. Before long, the craving left and I could return to my physical activity” without smoking.

Finally, I know that a lot of people will argue this out with me, I did a lot of fact finding about smoking and its health effects before I was finally able to stop smoking. As a matter of fact, this was what I did first before I started to work on quitting smoking. The more I learnt, the less I liked the habit, and it was the realization that I wasn’t just killing myself, but a lot of loved ones around me that made me finally commit to breaking the habit. I daresay if it can work for me, it ought to work for you too; I never once took a stop smoking drug or even had smoking cessation counseling.

Below you will find a few aids and ways to stop smoking that you may want to explore. They work, some physically, others psychologically, and sometimes you may need the guidance of a professional to help you in their administration. But they work, and as long as you apply them right, you are sure to reap the benefits and live a nicotine-free life.

Lobeline has been used for breaking the cigarette habit for the greater part of fifty years. There are medical professionals who believe that is has little more than a psychological effect, but no one can deny the fact that a lot of people who use the medication are actually able to stop smoking and stay that way. You should talk to your physician about it; you never know it may just be perfect for you. Lobeline is sold in the United States as Bantron and Nikoban.

Zyban is the brand name of a pill containing bupropoin. It is an antidepressant drug that works well with most other nicotine replacement products and a good deal of counseling. The results of this form of therapy to stop smoking are noteworthy, and most physicians prefer this to other methods. It works by extended-release of neurotransmitter inhibiting chemicals into your system so that you can get the feeling of smoking without smoking. It does have a few side effects, which make it mandatory that you speak with your doctor before you try it one.

The most popular aids to stop smoking are nicotine replacement products. Mostly they are the nicotine chewing gum (Nicorette), the nicotine nasal spray, and the nicotine patch (Nicotrol or Nicoderm CQ). What they do is to cause you to release small amounts of nicotine into your system to attend to your cravings. As you continue to use them, you are gradually weaned off of the harmful substance until you don’t need them so much anymore. You can get them over the counter just about everywhere in the United States.

Another way to stop smoking that you may not have considered is alternative medicine. There is considerable controversy regarding how safe and effective these smoking cessation methods are so you may want to do some personal research on your own before you embark upon them. Few people will deny the fact that hypnotism really does work to help addicts break the habit, but the effect of acupuncture in the same regard is still in question. If at all you do decide to pursue any of these methods, at least see to it that you settle for a practitioner with good repute.

There are a lot of other aids and ways by which you can stop your smoking habit, and you will find them all over the Internet. I will only advice that a little caution never hurt anybody, especially if you are hoping to quit smoking and never relapse into the habit. Go to it.

Hypnotism opens your subconscious to the administrator so that you can be coerced that way to let go of your craving for nicotine and the cigarette. Without doubt, a lot of people are able to break their smoking habits this way; but some psychoanalysts insist that it is better for the patient to be fully conscious when they break free from the habit otherwise they are never truly free. The fear is that their hypnotic trance could one day break, and then the patient will not be able to hide behind it anymore, and relapse to smoking again. For a fact, I am yet to see that happen, so I suppose it is some kind of overreaction to an unfounded fear. There are lots of hypnotism experts, listed on the internet that you can follow up at your own convenience; you should.

Another smoking cessation treatment by alternative medicine is acupuncture; again acupuncture is quite controversial as a treatment for any set of symptoms because not all medical professionals agree about its effectiveness. I will state for acupuncture that it has been in practice for the greater part of five centuries since ancient Chinese medicine has existed.

Acupuncture worked simply by the rearrangement of the body’s chemicals using all kinds of needles to stimulate pressure points and nerve endings in the body. In treating smoking addiction, the working principle of acupuncture is no different. With the needles applied to the right points, the proper chemicals are secreted that tell your brain that you no longer need nicotine in your system. As long as the process is not reversed, you can remain smoke free from that day onward.

An effective stop smoking effort that a lot of people also do not acknowledge is stress management. You are addicted because you started smoking, and you started smoking either as a means of recreation, or because you were looking for a way out of the daily stresses that you had to deal with. Well, you picked the wrong solution, and this is the time to retrace your steps. Through stress management, you can identify the triggers responsible for your smoking habit in the first place, isolate them, and eliminate them. Before long, you have no reason to smoke anymore.

There are also a lot of herbs you can find, if you peruse the internet thoroughly enough, which are known to have soothing and antidepressant properties. If you are trying to stop smoking, they are a sure natural bet. As long as you continue to take them, your cravings for cigarettes and nicotine will be suppressed, and you may not realize it until you have lived for several weeks without craving for nicotine, that you have finally broken your addiction to the substance. Keep at it, will you.