The truth about Nicotine Replacement Therapy

For years Allen Carr tried to convince the UK tobacco control establishment to look at the incredible success rates he was achieving with his simple, fast, drug-free approach, with a view to making it freely available to all smokers wanting to quit.

Allen said to me that he felt like he had a cure for cancer, but nobody in authority wanted to know. According to Allen, the tobacco control bureaucracy was no different than any other inept government body - slow-moving, bureaucratic and biased. His frustration was partially born out of the unwavering support by the establishment towards Nicotine Reaplcement Therapy which has comparitively low success rates. He felt that this support was based on the funding provided by the drug companies that manufacture these products.

Allen wrote about this at length in his final book, Scandal, which can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.allencarr.com/

The Wall St. Journal's Kevin Helliker wrote a fascinating article about the influence of drug companies in the formation of public health policy in this field. To read more go to http://www.aerzteinitiative.at/PharmaTies07.htm

This is your brain on Chantix

Derek DeKoff, a journalist writing for New York magazine had this to say about his experience to try to quit smoking using Chantix (Champix). Suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and blackouts - not everyone's idea of fun.

http://nymag.com/news/features/43892/

For a more effective, drug-free approach to quitting smoking, visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

The Best Time to Quit Smoking

The one word answer: tomorrow!


But isn't that what you said yesterday? And the day before?

The reason that 'tomorrow' is the smoker's favorite answer is because it means we don't have to do it today. We know we should quit smoking in the long-term, but that's the long-term and we'll think about that later. For now, we want to smoke, and the immediate fear of feeling deprived trumps the longer-term fear of being killed by smoking.

We 'want' to smoke because, even though we know it kills one out of every two smokers, we think it helps us relax or cope with stress or that it keeps us thin. On top of these beliefs that smoking is somehow pleasurable or beneficial, we believe that quitting smoking is extremely difficult and unpleasant. Nicotine withdrawal is said to be brutal; "harder to quit than heroin" we're told. We believe that even if we make it, we will never be truly happy as non-smokers and that we will go through the rest of lives feeling deprived.


With beliefs like this is it surprising that the best day to quit is always 'tomorrow'?


The key to finding it easy to stop smoking is to change the way you see smoking and quitting. Allen Carr's method teaches smokers to shift their prespective. As soon as I began to see the cigarette not as the solution, but as the problem; when I realized that there was nothing to 'give up'; when I understood that as a smoker I experienced nicotine withdrawal for hours at a time when I was asleep and that it was so mild that it didn't even wake me up; when I realized that it was smokers, not non-smokers, who were deprived - of their health, their money, their energy, their self-respect and their freedom - then I realized it could be easy to quit and do you know what?


It was.


For more information on how to build a winning mindset when it comes to quitting smoking, visit us at http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/

A thought for the day...

There are approximately 45m smokers in the US and Canada. There are an estimated 60m ex-smokers. This means that there are more people who have quit smoking than who smoke. What is so special about these people? Absolutely nothing. Like you, many of them thought they would never be able to quit, but they did it, and so can you.

To find out how you can join the 60m visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

Happy Valentine's Day

Another great reason to quit: the chances of getting lucky on Valentine's Day are better if you don't smell like an ashtray!

Hope you all have a great and fun day...

So, what's it really like to be a non-smoker?

When I was a smoker I could never visualize myself as a happy non-smoker. I was convinced that I would go through the rest of my life craving the cigarette I could never smoke and that my life without my 'little friend' would be one of misery, deprivation and irritability.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. When I quit smoking I did not lose a friend, I killed an enemy. As a non-smoker I feel happier, much healthier and free. My energy levels, self-confidence and self-esteem have gone through the roof. The cold hands, the lethargy, the depression and the panic attacks have disappeared.


I still cry when my team loses and I still celebrate when they win. I still love my family, and the fact that I can now spend time with them without trying to create an excuse to leave them to go for a smoke. I still can't stand artichokes or hip-hop. I still worry that I'm going bald...I just don't have to smoke any more, that's all.

Smoking and weight

I am writing this blog entry in response to a post on the excellent Basil and Spice blog (http://www.basilandspice.com/) which talked about weight gain and quitting smoking.

The issue of smoking and weight control is not as simple as you might think. There are two myths we need to deal with here: first, the idea that smoking helps control weight, either as an appetite supressant or as an agent to boost the metabolism and second, that quitting smoking leads to weight gain.

Many smokers claim that the cigarette works as an appetite supressant but this is really a subtle illusion. Physical withdrawal from nicotine, which starts as soon as the smoker puts out a cigarette, feels very similar to hunger - a slight emptiness in the pit of your stomach. So when the smoker lights up and the 'hunger pang' disappears the smoker gives the cigarette the credit for supressing their appetite when in fact all it has done is to remove a nicotine pang which feels similar to a hunger pang. Think about it; do you think that non-smokers get 'hungry' twenty times a day? Of course not. So why would smokers?

At a physiological level what is happening is this: when a smoker lights up, the poisons contained in tobacco smoke make the body feel that it's under attack. This prompts the adrenal gland to release adrenaline - the fight or flight chemical which in turn prompts the release of stored glucose into the blood (because your body thinks it will need the extra energy to run or to fight). As the blood sugar increases, the smoker's body is tricked into thinking it has eaten because the symptom of hunger (the hunger pang which is actually a nicotine pang) has been removed.

However, this is very short-lived. After a few minutes the body realizes that it is not really under attack and the pancreas produces insulin to mop up the excess blood sugar. This leaves many smokers feeling tired and lethargic. In fact this explains the so-called 'wired and tired' phenomenon experienced by many smokers. The adrenalin released when your body thinks it is being attacked makes you feel jumpy and edgy but the oxygen deprivation and plummeting blood sugar caused by smoking makes you feel lethargic.

When the smoker puts out the cigarette, they immediately go into physical withdrawal again, and within 30-45 minutes they usually begin to feel 'hungry' again, and so the cycle keeps repeating.

So that explains the illusion of the cigarette as an appetite supressant, but what about the metabolism? It is true that smoking elevates the metabolism, but it does it only by a small amount and in the most dangerous way imaginable - by clogging up your blood and creating a thick layer of plaque around the lining of your veins, arteries and capillaries. The impact of this is to increase the smoker's blood pressure and heart rate, which is basically a recipe for a heart attack.

The impact of this higher metabolic rate has been calculated to be around 100 calories a day - the equivalent of a slice of bread. So if you want to retain the same body weight you were as a smoker you will need to reduce your calorific intake by around 100 calories.

Let's face it, it's not as if smokers have this fabulous fat-burning capacity just because they smoke. If that were true, you would never see an overweight smoker, and there are plenty of those around - I was one for years, until I quit and was able to take control of my eating, drinking and exercise, which leads me to my next point - that quitting smoking leads to weight gain.

When I was a smoker I was approximately 60lbs overweight (so much for smoking keeping us thin). The reasons for this were obvious: I couldn't taste food very well and found myself eating foods high in sugar, salt and fat (basically junk food). I also drank too much. I had two young girls and I would never smoke in front of them so I used to go to the village pub every night and drink 5 or 6 beers, just so I could smoke. And, as you can imagine smoking 60 a day, exercise wasn't particularly high on my agenda. When I quit smoking I started exercising because for the first time in my adult life I had energy. I stopped drinking vast quantities of beer (which saved me nearly 900 calories a day) and started eating good food. I lost 35lbs in the first four months after quitting. The weight fell off me.

When you hear stories of people putting large amounts of weight on when they quit smoking they are invariably substituting food for cigarettes. They feel that by quitting smoking they are depriving themselves of a pleasure or crutch. This sense of deprivation leads to feeling a void, and many people try to fill this void with food. The truth is that smoking was the problem here. Cigarettes were the void. By becoming a non-smoker you fill the void and are complete.

Think about it: the metrics of weight control do not change when you become a non-smoker. The metrics of weight control are identical for smokers and non-smokers. Weight depends on what you eat, how much of it, your exercise regime and your genes.

Basically, if you consume more calories than you expend, you'll put weight on. It is said by nutritionists that to put on 1lb of weight, you need to consume approximately 4,000 calories more than you expend.

Let's say that you are worried about putting, say, 20lbs on over a couple of months. This would amount to an 80,000 calorie 'surplus' or 1,333 calories a day. You tell me: would it be possible to consume 1,333 calories a day more than you are currently consuming, every single day for 60 days without knowing about it? No way. You would have to be aware of this increase in consumption. Like I said, people who put large amounts of weight on when they quit are inavariably using willpower. They still want to smoke, but they won't allow themselves to do so. This makes them feel deprived and miserable and they try to console themselves by eating a box of chocolates.

This is why it is so important to see quitting not as a loss, but as a gain. If you see it as a loss, you will want to substitute - probably with food. However if you see quitting as a gain, that you are taking your life back and that this is a wonderful thing, then there is no sense of a void and no temptation to substitute.

It is true that smokers on average tend to weigh around 500g less than non-smokers, but this in itself is not a meaningful statistic because when you look at seriously underweight people (many of whom suffer from eating and/or anxiety disorders) we see that most of them smoke. When we factor this into the situation we find that 'normal' smokers and 'normal' non-smokers weigh the same.

Given that obesity is such a problem these days, surely if nicotine worked to control weight doctors would recommend the patch or nicotine gum for weight loss?

Smoking doesn't make you thin, and following Allen Carr's principles, quitting doesn't make you fat.

Taking inspiration from a Giant shock

Many congratulations to the NY Giants on their wonderful Superbowl win yesterday. It shows what is possible with preparation, belief and a good plan, even when the odds are stacked against you.

So many smokers are intimidated by the idea of quitting, and feel that the odds are stacked against them, but the reality is that thousands of people do so successfully every day. There are an estimated 50m smokers in North America today, but an estimated 65m ex-smokers. What is so special about these people? Absolutely nothing. They did it, and so can you.

So why not take a lesson out of the Giant's playbook? You won't win a ring, but you might add a few years to your life....

Eight questions every smoker should ask themselves

When I was a smoker I tried not to think about smoking because when I did, I ended up feeling stupid and frightened. When I eventually plucked up the courage to confront my smoking, here are some of the questions I began to ask myself as a smoker and they put me on the road to freedom.


1. When did you decide to become a smoker for life? When you lit those first few experimental cigarettes as a child or young adult, were you really deciding to be a smoker for life? Did you really think that those first cigarettes would put you in this situation today?

2. If smoking is so great, why does everyone want to quit? Over 70% of adult smokers want to quit. If smokers genuinely enjoyed smoking, they wouldn't want to quit.

3. Have you ever met a smoker who would encourage their kids to start smoking? Why are smokers always so happy when their kids grow up to be non-smokers? Is it because we don't want them to make the same mistake as we did? If smokers enjoyed smoking, they wouldn't perceive smoking as a mistake -they would want to share this pleasure with their children and the fact that they don't raises a big red flag for me: Why not?

4. If smoking relieves stress, why aren't smokers less stressed than non-smokers? Research shows that smokers are far more stressed than non-smokers. If smoking genuinely relieved stress, then the opposite would be true. Smokers are also much more likely than non-smokers to suffer from anxiety disorders and depression.

5. If physical withdrawal from nicotine is so bad, then why can chain-smokers sleep through the night? Most smokers think they only go into withdrawal when they try to stop smoking but the reality is that withdrawal starts the second a smoker puts out a cigarette. If withdrawal is so bad, then why can smokers sleep through every night when they go to bed? Do you think a heroin addict could sleep through heroin withdrawal?

6. What is the true cost of smoking? We think in terms of the cost of smoking as being the cost of smokes (which is bad enough these days), but this isn't really the case. If each cigarette takes ten minutes out of our day, then a pack-a-day smoker spends 200 minutes a day smoking - or three hours and twenty minutes. Over a year, this amounts to over 1200 hours or 152 working days spent smoking. At $20 per hour, this amounts to $24,320 in time lost due to smoking. This is time you could have spent working, or relaxing, or with your family, or studying.

Then there is the biggest cost of all - losing between 8-24 years of your one and only life. And what of those who are left behind. What is the cost they pay?

7. Why doesn't it take you willpower not to take cyanide? Even if you were totally immune to the effects of cyanide, would you take it? Of course not. It's not knowing that cyanide is bad for you that makes it easy to turn down, it's knowing that there is no upside to taking it. Same with smoking. It isn't knowing that smoking is bad for you that makes it easy to quit, it's knowing that there are no benefits to smoking.


8. If smoking helps to control weight, why do we see so many overweight smokers? I told myself that I smoked to keep thin, ignoring the inconvenient fact that as a smoker I was 60lbs overweight. When I quit smoking I started exercising, eating properly and cut back dramatically on my drinking (most of which was consumed so that I could be somewhere I could smoke). The weight fell off me.

Why do smokers believe that quitting is hard?

Crossing a road is pretty easy, but only if you do it right. If you try to cross a busy highway, in fog, at night, wearing dark clothes, blindfolded, drunk and walking on your hands, you can make something that is basically pretty easy into something extremely difficult. And so it is with quitting smoking.

Smokers believe that quitting is hard for a couple of reasons: firstly, everyone tells them it is. Smokers are bombarded with messages from other smokers, drug companies and quit smoking ‘experts’ (many of whom have never smoked a cigarette in their lives) that smoking is ‘harder to quit than heroin’. I’ve never been a heroin addict, but I’m guessing that quitting the stuff is no picnic. Who could think of a worse mindset with which to approach a problem?

Secondly, throughout their smoking lives smokers have been told that smoking helps them relax, cope with stress, concentrate, keep them thin and so on. Any smoker who believes these things will retain a desire to smoke in those situations, and will need to use willpower to try to overcome that desire. This creates a conflict; part of them wants to quit, but part still wants to smoke and it is this conflict – not physical withdrawal from nicotine – that creates the symptoms of fear, panic, anxiety and irritability that so many smokers associate with quitting.

Thirdly, smokers are seriously misinformed about nicotine – in particular about how addictive it is and bad withdrawal is.

But despite these horror stories, every so often you come across one of those people that say: “Nah. Quitting smoking was easy.” I am one of those people and I want to share my experience with you.

I started smoking as an eleven year-old and for the next twenty-nine years never went a day without smoking. By the time I quit I was smoking 40-60 cigarettes a day. I tried to quit smoking many times over many years. I tried the patch, the gum, hypnosis, acupuncture, laser therapy, cold turkey, herbal treatments, homeopathic remedies – you name it, I tried it. I never made it to a single day smoke-free using these methods for the reasons I have already explained above: My expectation was that quitting would be difficult and unpleasant, that I would feel deprived of my pleasure or crutch, and that physical withdrawal was brutal.

As soon as I was able to change these beliefs, it was ridiculously easy to quit.

First, I decided to stop listening to people who found it difficult to quit and start listening to people who had found it easy. There are a surprisingly large number of such people.

Second, I learned how to challenge the beliefs that created the desire to smoke. If smoking relieved stress then why was I so stressed? If the cigarette was an appetite suppressant then why was I 60 lbs overweight as a smoker? If the cigarette aided concentration why weren’t smokers smarter than non-smokers? If the cigarette aids relaxation why aren’t chain smokers the most relaxed people on the planet? By challenging these beliefs I was able to realize that actually there was nothing to give up, apart from illusions I had acquired as a smoker – most of them as a very young smoker.

Third, I learned the facts about nicotine. It’s a powerful drug, but only in the sense that it hooks you very quickly. Believe it or not, there is an upside to the speed with which nicotine works – it gets out of your body very quickly too. Most smokers believe that they only go into physical withdrawal from nicotine when they try to stop smoking, but this is not true. The process of withdrawal begins as soon as a smoker puts out a cigarette. The reality is that just 20 minutes after putting out a cigarette the body is 50% nicotine free. After six hours of not smoking, the body is 97% nicotine free. Smokers sleep through physical withdrawal from nicotine every single night when they go to sleep, yet it is so mild that it doesn’t even wake them up. If withdrawal didn’t bother you as a smoker, why would it bother you as a non-smoker?

Equipped with this new mindset (courtesy of Allen Carr’s Easyway seminar): that quitting could be easy, that there was nothing to give up but illusions and that physical withdrawal was straightforward (having slept through it every night as a smoker), the confidence levels with which I approached my final quit were much higher than in the past. There was none of the fear and doubt that had plagued my earlier attempts to quit.

After smoking heavily for 29 years, I just walked away from the whole thing. That was nine years ago. I have never once missed smoking or had the slightest desire to light up. In fact, the sense of empowerment, freedom and accomplishment was amazing.

Knowledge is power and when you have the power instead of the cigarette, quitting is easy.