Smoking is an addictive and dangerous habit that affects the lives of millions of people around the world. Today, we are aware of the dangers of smoking, and smokers are urged to quit smoking for their own health. This is not easy to do, as most smokers begin at an young age. The average age at which many people begin to smoke is only thirteen years old. A habit formed at such a young age is not easily broken. Nicotine affects many parts of the body and it is hard to break this addiction without some help.
Nicotine addiction is only one of many diseases associated with smoking. Most smokers will require some help on how to quit smoking and many methods exist for this very purpose. There are many reasons why people begin smoking and develop a smoking habit. The main reason that people try smoking is peer pressure.
Some young people think smoking will make them appear more mature, and increase their popularity with their peers. It also is forbidden which makes it all the more attractive to rebellious teenagers, thus the low starting age for many people. This young age makes quitting smoking more challenging in your later years. Media can also have an impact on the decision to begin smoking. Smoking portrayed in movies or on television can lead you to believe that smoking is a safe activity.
Parents can wield the biggest influence over their children by setting a good example and not smoking, or quitting smoking. Parents who smoke are far more likely to have children who start to smoke. Nicotine is the drug within tobacco that smokers crave.
Nicotine can affect your mind and body in many negative ways. Nicotine, once inhaled into the lungs reaches the brain in a matter of just eight seconds. Once there, nicotine affects your heart rate and blood pressure.
Over time it can increase your bad cholesterol levels and narrow 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 one of the reasons many smokers cannot quit the habit.
Smoking can impact your health on many different levels. Low stamina is one side effect of smoking. More serious smoking related diseases include cancer and emphysema. Strokes and heart disease are also closely associated with cigarette smoking. A person who stops smoking will greatly reduce their risk of developing these diseases for every year they can go smoke free.
The outcome of these medical conditions caused by smoking is grim. Lung cancer is almost always fatal unless caught very early and 80% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Lung and heart disease can subtract years from your life unless you are able to quit smoking. Emphysema cannot be cured but only managed, plus the damage to your lungs cannot be repaired.
The benefits of quitting smoking include a longer life span and a better quality of life. There are many different ways to quit smoking, and you must pick 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 will actually quit smoking. Another option is going cold turkey, and this is effective for up to 11% of the smokers who choose this option. Other well known methods to quit smoking include an herbal kit that can guide you through quitting.
It has a success rate similar to that of nicotine gums and patches. Stop smoking hypnosis is a very popular and highly successful option for those who want to quit smoking without experiencing weight gain or withdrawal symptoms. Hypnotherapy has a high success rate with smokers who have decided to quit smoking. Quit smoking hypnosis might sound like an extreme solution but it delivers positive results up to 70% of the time.
This success rate is many times that of other methods. The reason stop smoking hypnosis is so effective is that it while the physical addiction to nicotine makes up only about 10% of the smoking addiction, the psychological aspects of the habit make up about 90% of the smoking addiction. Hypnosis treats this aspect of the addiction. About 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by stress, and hypnotherapy has proven to be a powerful, non-invasive tool that can help reprogram the mind to divert away from stressful thoughts, and towards more positive and relaxing 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 caused by conditioned responses. This is where smoking is associated with other situations 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. Each time you see the TV, your unconscious flashes an image of the cigarette in your hand, and you experience an urge to smoke. Hypnotherapy is routinely used to "extinguish" the conditioned responses by disassociating the unconscious connections between cigarettes and TV, drinking coffee, working on your computer, driving, or any other situation where an unconscious association has been formed.
In summary: Although most smokers think that their inability to quit smoking is based on their addiction to nicotine, in truth it's the mental aspects of a smoking addiction that present the largest barriers. Hypnotherapy was accepted by the American Medical Association in 1958 as an effective tool. Hypnosis for quitting smoking is the second most common use of hypnotherapy today. While hourly rates for hypnotherapists continue to skyrocket, there are some effective 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 hypnosis CDs, look for those that incorporate a broad variety of hypnotic and NLP techniques in a series of at least six or more sessions to enjoy the best possible results. In any case, the cost of the very best self hypnosis CD and DVD sets equates to far less than the amount that an average smoker spends every month on cigarettes.
Alan B. Densky, CH invented the Video Hypnosis stop smoking technology that helps smokers easily quit the habit. He also created many ways to quit smoking with Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP. Visit the Neuro-VISION self improvement hypnosis site for free hypnosis videos and MP3s. http://www.neuro-vision.us/