Tag: Tobacco Cessation

Over the next few weeks, as you move through the QuitWell™ program, you might notice yourself moving back and forth between the stages as different factors affect your thinking. For example, a stressful day at work can make you feel like you’ve taken a step backward. Don’t let that stop you! This guide will give you tools to work through challenges and be better prepared for future ones.

You can try out nearly all the activities in this guide, though pay special attention to the activities highlighted for your stage of change. Look for the tips throughout the guide that help you fit an activity to your stage of change. This will help you feel good about where you are at and help you feel more confident about the future. When you feel yourself moving forward in the stages of change, you can go back to these activities and do them again, using the tips for your new stage of change.

In a few words, describe how you are feeling right now about quitting. What brought you here? What stage of change do you feel fits you best right now?

We will teach you four skills to relax:

*Relaxation Reflex:Getting rid of muscle tension.

*Mental Imagery:Thinking of calm, restful places.

*Deep Natural Breathing:Feeling relaxed by breathing in more oxygen.

*Spend Time with Animals:Feeling relaxed, happy and secure.

These relaxation strategies are not designed to take your stress away. Done correctly, they will help you calm your body and mind so that you can think more logically, see major problems as manageable challenges, and get through a tough day.

If something helps you-even a little-add it to your quitting tool kit. Remember, you will probably need a lot of strategies to be successful in the long run. One strategy may work on Monday morning, but you’ll need another tool on Friday afternoon!

You’ve probably heard a lot of reasons why you should quit, but the best reasons are your own. Making lifestyle changes to fit with your own values and reasons makes your successes more meaningful. It can also be easier to overcome challenges along the way.

You can do this activity at all stages of change, even if you aren’t planning to quit right now or have already quit. If you don’t feel like anything is motivating you right now, that is OK. You can return to this activity in the future. If you have already quit, think about why you want to stay quit.

Here are some common reasons for quitting. Start a ‘Why Quit’ list. If any of these ring true for you, add them to your list.

*  Avoid major health problems in the future

*  Be able to breathe more easily

*  Better circulation, especially to fingers and toes

*  Easier, deeper sleep

*  Good feeling when waking up

*  A younger, brighter, more lively look

*  In order to have surgery (many surgeons require you to quit first)

*  Pregnancy/new baby (as a mother, partner, or grandparent)

*  Keep new home or car clean

*  Be healthier for loved ones

*  Save money

*  Smoking/chewing/vaping no longer fits a current or desired lifestyle

*  Worried about known and unknown long term risks

*  More healthy years with family & friends

*  Pride in accomplishing something you set out to do

*  Freedom from being “owned” by an addiction and a tobacco company

*  Better sense of taste & smell

*  More energy

Actions, especially habits, are linked. For example, you may light up a cigarette without thinking when you start your car, end a meal, drink coffee, or hear your alarm clock. If you dip or use other forms of tobacco/nicotine, you may have similar triggers.

Altering triggers can help you break your automatic habits.

Scrambling

Scramble your routine to stop the triggers before they happen.

1. Change your morning routine.

2. Change your work area and the times of the day you do things.

3. Change the route you take to work.

4. Change the way you talk on the phone.

5. Take a walk with a water bottle instead of a coffee break.

6. Sit in a new place at the dining room or kitchen table.

7. What other ways can you change your routines?

Heart Disease

Smoking is the greatest risk factor for heart disease. A smoker’s chance of having a heart attack is 3 times that of a non-smoker. High blood pressure is a major cause of stroke and a prime risk factor for heart disease. High blood pressure is more severe in smokers. People with high blood pressure can lower their risk of heart disease by 50% when they quit.

1. Carbon monoxide reduces oxygen going to the heart.

2. The heart works harder to move  the oxygen through the body. Breathing speeds up.

3. Nicotine causes the blood vessels to constrict. Blood pressure goes up. The heart becomes more stressed.

4. A greater amount of cholesterol forms on the blood vessel walls.

5. Over time, less oxygen puts strain on the heart and heart cells die.

Cancer

Cigarette smoke has been proven to contain cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) and co-agents (co-carcinogens). The parts of the body that come into direct contact with smoke are more likely to develop cancer: lungs, mouth, trachea, esophagus, and larynx. The breakdown products in smoke also affect other organs that do not come into direct contact with smoke:  the pancreas, kidney, and bladder.

Chronic Bronchitis

Chronic bronchitis can make it very hard to breathe. This is because the lining of your bronchial tubes (the tubes that air goes through to get to your lungs) becomes inflamed and irritated. While acute (temporary) bronchitis caused by a cold or virus usually goes away within a few weeks, excess mucus and lung damage can mean months and months of coughing and breathlessness.

1. Cigarette smoke paralyzes hair like fibers (cilia) that line and clean the bronchial tubes.

2. Excess mucus is produced in the tubes. The result is a mucus plug.

3. Chronic coughing is the way a smoker removes the plug so oxygen can get in.

Emphysema

Emphysema can also make it very difficult to breathe. This problem develops in a different way than chronic bronchitis:

1. Oxygen enters the blood stream through air sacs in the lungs. The ‘tars’ from cigarette smoke gather on the lung walls and burst the sacs.

2. These heavy tars also make the lungs longer and less able to stretch.

3. Breathing becomes difficult.

If you are punished for doing something, you are less likely to keep doing it. If a person threw a bucket of water in your face each time you walked around the block, you would take fewer walks.

Urge Zapper

1. Place a stretchy band on your wrist.

2. Snap your wristband whenever you have an urge to use tobacco/nicotine.

Tobacco Consequence Control

When you get an urge, think of something you want to avoid-shortness of breath, cancer, heart disease, or letting someone down. What do you want to avoid?

As the urge goes away, reward yourself by thinking of something you are looking forward to with quitting-feeling in control, breathing more easily, or having more money. What do you look forward to?

Butt Bottle Revival

1. Keep your butt bottle where you can see it.

2. Open it up and smell.

3. Add water to highlight the foul odor.

Secondhand smoke is the smoke that occurs when a cigarette, pipe, or cigar is lit. The secondhand smoke going into the room from the end of a burning cigarette is not filtered. People breathing in secondhand smoke are breathing in this smoke, as well as what the smoker blows into the room. Secondhand smoke puts non-smoking bystanders (maybe your loved ones) at risk for the same health problems as the smoker.

Some of the toxins found in secondhand smoke are tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, cadmium, benzpyrene, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, acetone, pyridine, and formaldehyde. Although secondhand smoke becomes mixed with the air, there are safety risks for both the smoker and non-smokers, as well as pets who breathe these vapors in.

Infants & Children

Children of smokers are at a higher risk for respiratory infections, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, and middle ear infections. Asthma can become more severe. Children of smokers are also much more likely to start smoking.

Pets

Your beloved fur ball can develop serious health problems, including nose and lung cancers, from secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke can also cause respiratory illness in cats and dogs and make skin conditions worse. Thirdhand smoke, or the smoke residue that settles on surfaces, can be especially damaging to cats. When cats lick their fur to clean themselves, they lick the toxins from smoke. This makes cats more than twice as likely to develop malignant lymphoma, a type of cancer.

Protect Your Loved Ones

To protect others from secondhand smoke, avoid smoking in enclosed spaces that you share with others, like your house or car. If you are going to smoke, go outside and make sure windows are closed to the house near the area you are smoking. Avoid using a “smoking room” in the house or smoking in an attached garage-smoke will still get into the rest of the house.

Tobacco and nicotine products can affect many areas of your life.

*  If you aren’t sure if you want to quit, read this section to learn more about how tobacco/nicotine use may be affecting your current and future life. Think about how important each of these reasons is to you. This may change over time, or if you start noticing impacts in your life.

*  If you are ready to quit, consider adding these to your list of reasons you are making this change. Building a longer and stronger list of reasons you are choosing to make this change can help when the going gets tough.

*  If you have already quit and are trying to stay quit, this information can help you talk yourself through a craving or tough situation. It may reinforce your decision and help you feel good about the change you have made.