Tag: Tobacco Cessation

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.

1.Be patient.I am trying to free myself from tobacco/nicotine. Quitting may make me tense, anxious, and prone to sudden mood swings. This is because I am doing without something I was used to having. Soon I will be secure in my ability to manage and I will be better than ever. Please bear with me a little longer.

2.Be curious.For years I have been using tobacco/nicotine to pass the time, to reward myself, to calm myself, to wake up, to help me think, and to get through stressful events. Now I am coping all on my own. Ask me how I am managing; ask me what my life is like without nicotine. It’s all very new to me and I may want to talk about it.

3.Be sensitive.All day long I must deal with the urge to use tobacco/nicotine. Sometimes it seems as if just about everything makes me think about it: getting ready for work, talking on the phone, ending a meal… I could really use your help to distract myself from these thoughts. Unless I mention it first, please don’t bring up the subject of my quitting.

4.Be supportive.I really need someone to root for me right now, someone to be on my side. I enjoy the special attention (like rewarding my first week without tobacco/nicotine with a special treat) that you give me while I am in the “crawling” stage of quitting.

5.Be positive. Sometimes I feel it is hard to remember all the good things that come with quitting. I like it when you notice the positive changes that you see in me. It means a lot to know that you are proud of me.

6.Be confident.I want to make it, but sometimes I am not sure that I have what it takes to quit. I need the people around me to believe that I can do it… and to say so.

What else will be helpful to you? Share this with those who want to support you.