Cigarette Smoking Side Effects - How To Instantly Eliminate The Addiction With Self Hypnosis
July 24th, 2008Smoking is an addictive and dangerous habit that affects millions of people around the world. Today, we know about the dangers of smoking, and smokers are urged to stop smoking for the benefit of their own health. This is not an easy feat, as smokers begin at an extremely early age. The average age at which many people begin to smoke is only thirteen years old.
A habit formed at such an early age is not easily broken. Nicotine affects many parts of the body and it is hard to pull free without some assistance. There are many different diseases which can be caused by smoking. Most smokers will need some help on how to quit smoking and many different methods exist for this very purpose.
There are many reasons why people begin smoking and continue to smoke. The main reason that people start to smoke is peer pressure. It is deemed cool to be able to smoke. It also is forbidden which makes it all the more attractive to teenagers, thus the low starting age for many people. This young age makes ceasing smoking more difficult in your later years.
Media can also have an impact on the decision to begin smoking. Smoking portrayed on television or in movies can lead someone to believe that smoking is a harmless activity. Parents can wield the biggest influence over their children by setting a good example and discussing smoking, its dangers, and expressing their desire for their children not to smoke. Mothers and fathers who smoke are much more likely to have children who start to smoke.
Smokers begin to crave nicotine, a drug within tobacco. Nicotine can affect your body and mind in many different ways. Nicotine, once inhaled into the lungs reaches the brain in a mere eight seconds. Once there, nicotine affects your heart rate and blood pressure. Over time it can increase your bad cholesterol levels and cause the narrowing of your arteries. Nicotine in concentrated doses is a lethal poison, so you can imagine the damage it inflicts on your body. Nicotine is also addictive and this is why many cannot quit smoking.
Smoking can impact your health on a variety of levels. Low stamina is one side effect of smoking. More serious smoking related diseases include emphysema and cancer. Heart disease and stroke are also closely linked to cigarette smoking. A person who quits smoking will greatly reduce their risk of developing these diseases for every year they go without smoking.
The outcome of these medical conditions caused by smoking is grim. Lung cancer is almost always fatal unless detected very early and 80% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Heart and lung disease can take years from your life unless you learn how to quit smoking. Emphysema cannot be cured but only managed, plus the damage to your lungs cannot be repaired. Stop smoking benefits include a longer life span and a better quality of life.
There are many different methods to quit smoking, and you must select the best method for you as an individual. Nicotine gums and patches are designed to help you slowly withdraw from the nicotine addiction. Only about 10% of the people who use them quit smoking. Going cold turkey is another option and this is effective for up to 11% of the smokers who try to quit this way. Other popular methods to quit smoking include an herbal kit that can show you how to quit smoking. It has a success rate similar to that of nicotine patches and gums.
Hypnosis for smoking cessation is a very popular option for those who want to quit smoking without experiencing withdrawal symptoms or weight gain. Hypnotherapy has a high success rate with smokers who are trying to quit smoking. Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation might sound like an extreme solution but it delivers solid results up to 70% of the time. This success rate is far greater that of other methods.
The reason hypnotherapy is so effective is that it while the addiction to nicotine makes up only about 10% of the smoking addiction, the mental and emotional aspects of the habit make up a full 90% of the cigarette smoking addiction. Hypnotherapy treats this aspect of the addiction.
About 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by stress, and hypnosis has proven to be a powerful, non-invasive tool that can help reprogram the mind to divert it away from stressful thoughts, and towards relaxing, positive thoughts. In addition, the very essence of hypnosis is that it incorporates a deep state of relaxation.
And about 45% of the smoking behavior is prompted by conditioned responses. This is when smoking is associated with other stimuli at the unconscious level of mind. For example, if you smoke while watching TV, your unconscious will associate the image of a cigarette in your hand with the image of the TV. Every time you see the TV, your unconscious flashes an image of the cigarette in your hand, and you experience the compulsion to smoke.
Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation is routinely used to “extinguish” the conditioned responses by disassociating the unconscious links between cigarettes and TV, driving, coffee, working on your computer, or any other environment where an unconscious association has been formed.
In summary: Although most smokers think that their inability to quit smoking is due to their addiction to nicotine, in truth it is the mental and emotional aspects of a smoking habit that present the largest barriers. Hypnotherapy was accepted by the American Medical Association in 1958 as an effective tool for quitting smoking. And hypnosis for smoke cessation is the second most common use of hypnotherapy today.
While hourly rates for hypnotherapists climb higher and higher, there are excellent hypnosis CDs on the market that can greatly reduce its cost. Since everyone is different, there are no specific “magic” words or post-hypnotic suggestions that will work for everyone. So when choosing a self hypnosis program, look for programs that incorporate a broad variety of hypnotic and NLP techniques in a series of at least six or more sessions to obtain the best possible results. In any event, the cost of the best self hypnosis CD and DVD sets equates to much less than the amount that an average smoker spends every month on buying cigarettes.
Alan B. Densky, CH created the Video Hypnosis quit smoking technology which helps smokers easily break the habit. He also created other ways to stop smoking with Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP. Visit the Neuro-VISION self development hypnosis site for free hypnotherapy videos and MP3s.
- Alan B. Densky, CH