Effects of quitting smoking

When you stop smoking, the loss of nicotine changes the levels of dopamine and noradrenaline. This can make you feel anxious, depressed and irritable. It’s normal to crave nicotine when you quit, as smoking provides an immediate fix to these problems. Source: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/2278.aspx?CategoryID=53

How to avoid smoking and safe your money

Save money when you quit smoking Cigarettes cost money and the cost is increasing all the time. Have you considered how much money you could save by quitting smoking and being a non-smoker? Let's do the sums around the cost of smoking. If a packet-a-day smoker spends $12.50 on a packet of cigarettes then they spend: $87.50 a week. The cost of a nice meal at a good restaurant. $350 a month. The cost of a weekend away or some new clothes. $4,550 a year. The cost of a new lounge suite or top-level private health insurance for a whole family. $22,750 in 5 years. The cost of a holiday for two people to Europe, all expenses paid. $45,500 in 10 years. The cost of a house deposit or a significant mortgage repayment. Of course, these figures don't even take into account tobacco price increases that are happening all the time. Use the quit smoking savings calculator on the bottom left of our Home page to see how much money you are spending on tobacco. What would you do with all the extra money you're saving as a non-smoker? Some people like to save the money they would otherwise spend on smoking by placing the money in a jar or in a new bank account and watching it grow. Now that can be a great incentive and gift to yourself! Work out the cost of smoking and how you might enjoy the freedom and extra money that comes with quitting smoking. Source: http://www.icanquit.com.au/health/reasons-to-quit/money-saved

Why is it so hard to quit smoking

Smoking tobacco is both a physical addiction and a psychological habit. The nicotine from cigarettes provides a temporary, and addictive, high. Eliminating that regular fix of nicotine will cause your body to experience physical withdrawal symptoms and cravings. Because of nicotine’s “feel good” effect on the brain, you may also have become accustomed to smoking as a way of coping with stress, depression, anxiety, or even boredom. At the same time, the act of smoking is ingrained as a daily ritual. It may be an automatic response for you to smoke a cigarette with your morning coffee, while taking a break from work or school, or during your commute home at the end of a long day. Perhaps friends, family members, and colleagues smoke, and it has become part of the way you relate with them. To successfully quit smoking, you’ll need to address both the addiction and the habits and routines that go along with it. Source: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/quit_smoking_cessation.htm

Personal comments on smoking

Smoking May not be cool but it helps us to relief our stress level......when we smoke it helps us not think about some of the things we don't wish to remember according to experts smoking reduces your stamina and it's true and I was proven when we did our physical test then I felt that I could not run like I was out of breath very quickly....we do not recommend anyone to smoke because it's kills you slowly inside and it does not feel good so please do not smoke for those who don't at the moment but now for those who are smoking try to quit if not cut down smoking........

How regular do smokers smoke

Regulation of nicotine intake Smokers show a strong tendency to regulate their nicotine intakes from cigarettes within quite narrow limits. They avoid intakes that are either too low (provoking withdrawal) or too high (leading to unpleasant effects of nicotine overdose). Within individuals, nicotine preferences emerge early in the smoking career and seem to be stable over time. The phenomenon of nicotine titration is responsible for the failure of intakes to decline after switching to cigarettes with low tar and nicotine yields. Compensatory puffing and inhalation, operating at a subconscious level, ensure that nicotine intakes are maintained. As nicotine and tar delivery in smoke are closely coupled, compensatory smoking likewise maintains tar intake and defeats any potential health gain from lower tar cigarettes. Similar compensatory behaviour occurs after cutting down on the number of cigarettes smoked each day; hence this popular strategy fails to deliver any meaningful health benefits. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC324461/

Physical and psychological effects of smoking

Absorption of cigarette smoke from the lung is rapid and complete, producing with each inhalation a high concentration arterial bolus of nicotine that reaches the brain within 10-16 seconds, faster than by intravenous injection. Nicotine has a distributional half life of 15-20 minutes and a terminal half life in blood of two hours. Smokers therefore experience a pattern of repetitive and transient high blood nicotine concentrations from each cigarette, with regular hourly cigarettes needed to maintain raised concentrations, and overnight blood levels dropping to close to those of non-smokers.​non-smokers. Nicotine has pervasive effects on brain neurochemistry. It activates nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAchRs), which are widely distributed in the brain, and induces the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. This effect is the same as that produced by other drugs of misuse (such as amphetamines and cocaine) and is thought to be a critical feature of brain addiction mechanisms. Nicotine is a psychomotor stimulant, and in new users it speeds simple reaction time and improves performance on tasks of sustained attention. However, tolerance to many of these effects soon develops, and chronic users probably do not continue to obtain absolute improvements in performance, cognitive processing, or mood. Smokers typically report that cigarettes calm them down when they are stressed and help them to concentrate and work more effectively, but little evidence exists that nicotine provides effective self medication for adverse mood states or for coping with stress. A plausible explanation for why smokers perceive cigarettes to be calming may come from a consideration of the effects of nicotine withdrawal. Smokers start to experience impairment of mood and performance within hours of their last cigarette, and certainly overnight. These effects are completely alleviated by smoking a cigarette. Smokers go through this process thousands of times over the course of their smoking career, and this may lead them to identify cigarettes as effective self medication, even if the effect is the negative one of withdrawal relief rather than any absolute improvement, ​improvement. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC324461/

A persons social and behavioral aspects when smoking

The primary reinforcing properties of nicotine ultimately sustain smoking behaviour: in experimental models, if nicotine is removed from cigarette smoke, or nicotine's effects on the central nervous system are blocked pharmacologically, smoking eventually ceases. However, under normal conditions, the intimate coupling of behavioural rituals and sensory aspects of smoking with nicotine uptake gives ample opportunities for secondary conditioning. For a 20 a day smoker, “puff by puff” delivery of nicotine to the brain is linked to the sight of the packet, the smell of the smoke, and the scratch in the throat some 70 000 times each year. This no doubt accounts for smokers' widespread concern that if they stopped smoking they would not know what to do with their hands, and for the ability of smoking related cues to evoke strong cravings.​ Social influences also operate to modulate nicotine's effects. The direction of this influence can be to discourage smoking—as, for example, with the cultural disapproval of smoking in some communities, the expectation of non-smoking that has become the norm in professional groups, or the effects of smoke-free policies in workplaces. Other factors encourage smoking, such as being married to a smoker or being part of social networks in socially disadvantaged groups, among whom prevalence is so high as to constitute a norm. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC324461/