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Peter Howells - EzineArticles.com Expert Author  

Pete Howells is an expert specializing in Cognitive Behavioural Methods for quitting smoking and author of the best selling ebook, The EasyQuit System.

[View Peter Howells's Extended Author Bio]

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  • Craving a Cigarette - How Long Will it Last?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Craving a cigarette is, of course, one of the main worries about quitting smoking. How long the cravings for cigarettes are going to last after you have had that last cigarette is probably the main concern any smoker initially feels when they stop. It is such an overwhelming fear, that most smokers doom themselves to failure because they become obsessed with some little facet of the difficulties of quitting, like the ongoing cravings.


  • How to Become an Ex-Smoker
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] How to become an ex-smoker is a very important question for millions of people, chained to their cigarettes day in, day out. The difficulty most people face trying to quit means that after a few failed attempts, they give up trying to give up and resign themselves to an early grave!


  • Become An Ex-Smoker
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] If you want to become an ex-smoker, you are not alone! It is accepted that over 70% of all smokers would like to become an ex-smoker or at least, regret that they started smoking. With statistics like that, it is a wonder why so many continue.


  • What Happens To You When You Quit Smoking? - Part 2
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] In this second part of the article about what happens to you when you quit smoking, I want to touch on how junkie thinking will ruin your quit attempt if you are not careful. In part one of the article, I mentioned that you will suffer from nicotine withdrawal symptoms. These can be you downfall if you cannot handle them properly and junkie thinking is not the right way to handle them.


  • What Happens To You When You Quit Smoking? - Part 1
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is very important for you to know what happens to you when you quit smoking. Without this knowledge, you are likely to fall into the many quitter's traps that lay in wait for you and slide back into smoking.


  • Stop Smoking E-Book - What To Look For
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] A stop smoking eBook is about education and in my humble opinion; education is the key to learning how to stop smoking once and for all. Some people will tell you to use gum or patches or drugs, but for me it only takes a little thought and the right frame of mind.


  • Why Most People Can't Quit Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There is probably one reason over all others why most people can't quit smoking. It is simple, straight-forward and blindingly obvious, yet most smokers don't even realize that they are putting this massive obstacle in their way. If you tried to do anything else starting out with this mindset, you would realize that you would fail before you start too, but with smokers, they just cannot see the wood for the trees.


  • Nicotine Patch Addiction
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] You might think it unbelievable, but nicotine patch addiction is a reality! Smokers who try to quit using nicotine patches or other nicotine replacement therapies often report being unable to come off the patches or gum for many more months than expected in the pharmaceutical company's guide literature.


  • Quit Smoking Patches Are A Con!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is my firm belief that quit smoking patches sold by major pharmaceutical companies are a complete con. Not only is there conflicting evidence about quit smoking patch effectiveness, but (being a cynic) I think they are marketed to simply raise cash for the shareholders of the pharmaceutical companies!


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 6 of 10 - I'm Still Alive
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Smokers that are not dying or don't die as a result of some fatal smoking related disease do not enjoy good health whilst they are smoking either. There are a plethora of other illnesses and disease that smokers are more likely to suffer from than non-smokers.


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 3 of 10 - The Big "C"
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Research suggests about half of all smokers will be cut down in their prime years, their mid-30s to mid-60s by some fatal disease. The CDC (US Center for Disease Control) estimated that smokers lose between 13 and 15 years of life as a result of smoking. 8 out of 10 non-smokers live to their 70th birthday. Only 5 out of 10 smokers live to be 70 or more!


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 10 of 10 - Staying Quit
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] OK, so you have stopped smoking and you have a plan that seems to be working. There is a good chance the only thing you find yourself thinking about is smoking. Don't worry, this will pass with time.


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 9 of 10 - Preparing to Quit
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are people who can literally start and stop smoking at will. But for the rest of us, quitting smoking can be very difficult. The secret to raising your chances of success is to research and understand how to quit.


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 8 of 10 - Timeline of Change
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Welcome to part seven of this free quit smoking course. OK, I've told you that this smoking lark is really nasty, but the good news is that there are serious improvements to your health from the day you quit. Here is a list of things to know about how you will change over the coming weeks, months and years after quitting...


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 7 of 10 - Understanding Nicotine Withdrawal
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Quitting smoking is actually about quitting nicotine. You are addicted to nicotine and this is why you smoke. So when you quit, you are going to suffer from nicotine withdrawal symptoms.


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 5 of 10 - Heart Disease and COPD
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Whilst the biggest killer of smokers is cancer, heart disease and COPD are not to be looked upon lightly. They account for over half of all smoking related deaths. A quarter of all smokers will die from one of these two diseases!


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 4 Of 10, Lung Cancer - You Need To Know This
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] I don't want to scare you; I want to educate you because knowledge is a better companion than fear and misunderstanding. If you are a smoker, you need to know about lung cancer because you have a 1 in 6 chance of it affecting you directly. Some facts to start with...


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 2 of 10 - Weapon of Mass Destruction
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] As you will know from Part One's subject, an innocent cigarette is really a weapon of mass destruction, causing over 4.2 million deaths per year according to the World Health Organization. But what is it about a cigarette that is so dangerous?


  • Free Quit Smoking Course Part 1 Of 10 - The Scale Of The Problem
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Research has shown that people can only quit smoking when they really have a motive to quit smoking. It is not just a matter of knowing that you should quit smoking but also a matter of understanding why you need to quit smoking.


  • Quit Smoking Cold Turkey - You Don't Need Pills!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Cold turkey success rates are reported to be as low as 5%. I have been wondering why this is so and whether or not it is true. And I think I have an answer for why people think quit smoking cold turkey is such an ineffective way of giving up the smokes.


  • Quit Smoking Cold Turkey - Why Do It?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] I want to explain the reasons why I am such a big fan of people who quit smoking cold turkey. It is not because they are heroes, able to overcome the evils of nicotine and tobacco without help, it is because it is the best way to quit smoking.


  • Quit Smoking Cold Turkey - Why It Makes Sense
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] To quit smoking cold turkey is often thought of as being the hardest way to quit smoking. I would suggest that this is not the case. Personally, I tried all sorts of therapies to quit smoking over my 20 year smoking career and do you know the one that worked? That's right, the method that worked for me was to quit smoking cold turkey.


  • What is the Best Quit Smoking Support for You?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Whenever it is time to have yet another go at quitting smoking, it is useful to understand which quit smoking support options are best to help you on your way to being a long term non-smoker. After all, it is very unusual for people to quit smoking without any form of support, whether it be from a drug, doctor, group or book or some other source.


  • Quit Smoking Support Forums - Are They Any Use?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] If you have used the internet to research and find quit smoking products, you will probably have stumbled upon a few quit smoking support forums. These are forums that centre around helping people quit smoking by offering advice, encouragement and support to people coming off tobacco. But I want to play devil's advocate here an ask if they are any use.


  • Best Way To Quit Smoking - Does One Exist?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] In short the answer to the question: "Is there a best way to quit smoking" is yes. There is a best way to quit smoking for everyone but the method that may work for you may not work for others. What you need to do is find out which way is best for you.


  • Smoking Cessation Pills - Do They Work?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Smokers like the idea of smoking cessation pills. Studies in America have shown that 80% of smokers think they should quit. Many of them think that smoking cessation pills have the answers they are looking for as they offer that potential miracle cure that will take the pain, anguish and torment of smoking cessation away from smokers. But is this really the case?


  • Resolve To Stop Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is important that smokers genuinely 'resolve to stop smoking' when they 'decide' to stop. Resolving to stop smoking properly makes a significant difference in your chances of success. By making a 'proper' decision, you increase your chances of success in overcoming the evil weed several fold.


  • Stop Smoking Benefits - 10 More Reasons To Quit Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many benefits to stopping smoking. Most of the benefits are reductions in the risk of developing some disease or other. These benefits are the reason why you should stop smoking. They wont in themselves help you stop smoking but they will provide you with motivation to go on and learn how to stop smoking successfully.


  • Stop Smoking Benefits - 10 Reasons to Stop Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many benefits to stopping smoking. These benefits are the reason why you should stop smoking. They wont help you stop smoking but they will provide you with motivation to learn how to stop smoking successfully.


  • How to Quit Cigarettes
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] The simplest way to answer the question of how to quit cigarettes is to say, just don't smoke anymore! That is a bit of a fickle response though because if it were that easy, no one would bother to ask how to quit cigarettes would they?


  • The Best Stop Smoking Tip Ever!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] When I was a smoker, I was determined to find that one best stop smoking tip. I always thought that there was one that I could rely on and use to make me stop smoking. You see, smoking is incredibly difficult to quit until you have found your own solution, i.e. the best smoking tip ever for you. Then it becomes easy to stop smoking.


  • Stop Smoking Nicotine Patches - Utter Madness
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] As a former smoker who tried to stop smoking several times using stop smoking nicotine patches, I now often wonder why the medical profession think this could possibly be an effective treatment to help smokers stop smoking. The notion that you can treat an addiction with more of the substance that you are addicted to is a strange approach to say the least.


  • Quit Smoking Benefits - Some Motivators
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] People often want to know what happens when they quit smoking. If you have been researching quitting smoking for a while, you will have seen 'the list' of benefits to quitting smoking but here is a list of quit smoking benefits as to why you should want to quit.


  • Quit Smoking Tips - 10 More Pearls Of Wisdom!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] When you decide to have another try at forgoing the evil weed, you can always benefit from some quit smoking tips. Wouldn't life be wonderful if you could quit smoking whenever you pleased? Well, unfortunately, life isn't that easy but in the mean time, here are some pearls of wisdom that may help you quit smoking.


  • Quit Smoking Tips - 10 Of The Best
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is difficult for people to quit smoking (or so we are told) and until you actually realise it can be easy you could benefit from some quit smoking tips. You will need help to keep you off the smokes as long as you have this negative attitude to quitting. The following is a list of widely accepted tricks to help you get through the process of quitting.


  • 10 Quit Smoking Symptoms Explained
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many different quit smoking symptoms that appear in smokers who are trying to quit. The range of symptoms is quite wide but luckily, most smokers will not suffer all of the symptoms, only one or two. Nevertheless, some of the symptoms can be quite uncomfortable and can motivate smokers to start up and abandon quitting.


  • Cold Turkey Quit Smoking Method
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Many people have heard of the cold turkey quit smoking method but where does the phrase 'cold turkey' actually come from? Well, it is thought to be a description of the withdrawal effects that heroine addicts must endure when they stop using. One of these withdrawal symptoms is a cold sweat leading to goose pimples on a clammy skin. It's about the same a cold turkey before it goes in the oven at thanksgiving (without the butter of course!).


  • Quit Smoking Cold Turkey - Why It Is Better To Use Your Mind
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] To quit smoking cold turkey, i.e. without the aid of pills or false cigarettes or herbal remedies, is often thought to be the most difficult ways to quit smoking. However, there is one specific reason why to quit smoking cold turkey is far and away the best type of method to use. The reason is simply long term success.


  • Best Way To Quit Smoking - Does Such A Thing Exist?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] A question that most smokers hoping to quit would like to know the answer to is "what is the best way to quit smoking?" - and with good reason. The average smoker who quits will take seven attempts over several years to achieve their goal of becoming smoke free. During that time, they will suffer many bouts of low self-esteem as they normally fail time and time again. It can be a soul destroying objective.


  • Chantix Side Effects
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Chantix is the US trading name for the drug varenicline, developed by Pfizer and released for general use in 2006. It has received some exceptional media attention due to its (claimed) success rates. Pfizer's own website claims a 44% success rate which makes for a very interesting and potentially profitable drug. The more commonly accepted 'success rate' is only 22% however.


  • Quit Smoking Pills
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There is a whole raft of quit smoking pills available on the market these days. Most of them are advertised as being a 'cure-all' for your woes as a smoker and will alleviate all of your concerns about quitting smoking. They come in two main forms - pharmaceutical types made by the big drug companies or 'snake oil' types made from 'magic' ingredients. However, I have my doubts about the need for pills at all.


  • How Many Quit Smoking Methods Are There?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] In my years as a smoker, researching how to quit smoking, I can truly say there must be over 60 methods of quitting smoking available. Some are effective, others less so and to be quite frank with you, some are utterly ludicrous. But, just because some methods do not work for some people, does not mean they cannot be effective for many others.


  • Stop Smoking Medications
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] In this day and age, we all want a cure-all pill that will solve all of our woes. We want a stop smoking pill, a diet pill, a little blue sex pill, a heartburn pill an anti-stress pill and an anti-depression pill. Heck if you could make one pill that did all that, you would make Bill Gates look like a pauper! But what stop smoking medications are there available to us?


  • How Can I Quit Smoking? #3
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] The question, "how can I quit smoking?" is not really the full, true question that most smokers want answering. The real gist of the question I believe that most smokers want to know the answer to is "how can I quit smoking easily?" or "how can I quit smoking without any effort?" or "how can I quit smoking when I haven't the willpower to?"


  • How To Quit Smoking Easily
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Virtually every smoker in the world would pay a good price for the answer to "how to quit smoking easily". Whilst studies have indicated that as many as 80% of smokers yearn to quit, unfortunately, they spend very little time or money on trying to quit. Internet search engine data suggests that quit smoking information is searched for more than twice as much during the 4-week period around New Year. The sad fact of the matter is that most smokers have a look for information and end up reading the same tired old advice about how to quit smoking - and that it isn't easy.


  • How Can I Quit Smoking? #2
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] "How can I quit smoking?" is one of the most important questions for any smoker. In the back of every smokers mind, most days is a question about how they can go without their lovely, tasty smokes! Anyone who actually knows the answer to this question and can add, without any effort to it, will be rich beyond belief.


  • Methods To Stop Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many, many methods to stop smoking available through many means including, books, videos, CDs, workshops, consultants and to download over the internet. Of the many methods to stop smoking out there, there are often very many very zany approaches amongst the more sensible ones.


  • Quit Smoking Side Effects
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are a whole host of quit smoking side effects and not all of them are pleasant. Besides the obvious health benefits, there are also a number of side effects associated with withdrawal from nicotine. Coupled to this, if you quit smoking using a medication such as zyban or chantix, you may pick up some other drug related side effects.


  • How To Stop Smoking Without Weight Gain
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There is substantial evidence underlining weight gain as the main concern smokers cite as a reason for not stopping smoking. This is amongst the many other excuses smokers give for putting off stopping smoking. Other examples include the inability to cope with stress or a fear that they will not be able to enjoy an upcoming party or their life in general without their trusty cigarettes.


  • What Happens When You Quit Smoking?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is thought that over 85% of smokers want to quit smoking. The main reason given by smokers for wanting to quit is that they know that they are damaging their health. Financial concerns come in second place to health concerns. Most smokers will cite fear of lung cancer as their main health concern, but there are many other health problems associated with smoking.


  • Quitting Smoking Benefits
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many quit smoking benefits – and obviously health benefits are the main reason why most people want to quit smoking. Secondly, money plays a part in quitting smoking and the benefit to the average smoker is in excess of $1500 per year, so that is a good financial quit smoking benefit!


  • Laser Treatment to Quit Smoking
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Using laser treatment to quit smoking is based on the practice behind acupuncture. Using laser treatment to quit smoking consists of using lasers to stimulate the acupuncture or acupressure points. This is done in the same way as where acupuncture needles would be used, inserted into specific regions of the body, but low power lasers are used instead.


  • New Smoking Ban in England
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] 11 key facts you should know about the smoking ban in England. It is important to know what is still legal and what is illegal so you don't get handed a £50 or £2,500 fine!


  • Quit Smoking Programs
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There are many different quit smoking programs available to day. In this article we shall look at some of them and their relative effectiveness. The most obvious quit smoking program is to use the old cold turkey method. This involves simply depriving yourself of cigarettes or tobacco. It has the very lowest success rate of all quit smoking programs at around 5% after 6 months.


  • The Nicotine Replacement Therapy Scam
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] For many years, pharmaceutical companies have been telling us that Nicotine Replacement Therapies such as patches, gums and lozenges can help us quit smoking. They can't. All NRT treatments do is provide profit for these companies on the back of your nicotine addiction.


  • How Can I Quit Smoking?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Smokers are all aware of the damage they are doing to themselves by smoking. Every day they are bombarded with more information about how much damage they are doing to their health. But this is just a depressing message that achieves nothing for the smoker.


  • Young Smokers
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] There is known evidence that smoking when young, whether directly or passively, has a much more significant impact on future health than starting when a young adult. However, there is a major health risk associated with smoking irrespective of when smokers' start and half of all smokers will die prematurely due to smoking.


  • The Anatomy of Smoking in the UK
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Tobacco was brought to Europe from the Americas at the end of the 15th century when it was thought to have medicinal qualities. Indeed, as late as the 1940s, tobacco companies used medical personnel such as doctors in advertisements to promote their particular brands of cigarettes.


  • Respiratory Disease Risks in Smokers
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It is well documented that smoking causes cancer and more specifically lung cancer. Indeed, smoking is responsible for lung cancer in 80% of female cases and 90% in male cases in western society. Alarmingly, 25% of all smokers who die prematurely from their smoking induced illness will die from lung cancer. However, an oft-overlooked aspect of smoking is the ‘nearly as common' incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary (lung) disease. (Just to highlight a common misconception, chronic means 'over a long period of time' and not acute, which is short-lived. People often confuse the two.)


  • Risk of Smoking in Women
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Smoking kills 114,000 people per year in the UK and a growing proportion of these are women. The risks taken by women in smoking are many fold and are well documented. Of these 114,000 deaths, over 42,000 of them are women.


  • Smoking, Death and Taxes - a Homage to Benjamin Franklin
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] As Benjamin Franklin put it in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, in 1789, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." And when it comes to smoking, he could not have put it any more succinctly.


  • Passive Smoking Effects
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Passive smoking is the involuntary inhalation of cigarette smoke of other people's cigarettes. Passive smoking, secondary smoke, second hand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke all relate to the same thing – that being the involuntary inhalation of tobacco smoke. Cigarette smoke is generally defined as either the exhaled smoke from a smoker or the 'sidestream' smoke from the cigarette tip.


  • How can I Quit Smoking?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] For some time, I have been studying why some people who choose to quit smoking or lose weight succeed and why some of them don't. To be fair, most people who want to quit smoking and then go on to make an attempt actually fail. Most people who chose to diet lose some weight then put it back on. But why is this?


  • How to become a Happy Non-Smoker
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] Smoking has got to be one of the worst afflictions man has brought upon himself. As Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland put it, "A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer." Of course, in the old days people didn't even know that there was a connection between smoking and becoming ill not only through cancer, but also via a whole host of other diseases.


  • Does the Government really want you to Quit Smoking?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] The price of whiskey has stayed pretty much the same for the last 10 years in the United Kingdom. Every year the duty on cigarettes goes up by 10-20 pence because of the Government's policy of taxing smokers out of smoking. The incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, likes to drink whiskey but he doesn't smoke. You could argue that this is why whiskey is 'missed' from the rises (but other spirits are not) whereas cigarette duty is increased every year - but the policy simply isn't working.


  • Death by Cigarettes
    [Health-and-Fitness:Quit-Smoking] It has long been known that smoking and lung cancer are causally linked. After having discovered this association though, much has been made of the heightened incidence of other forms of cancer caused by of smoking. I am going to highlight the data that reiterates the claims and suggest that the evidence is not so strong for other forms of cancer being causally linked with smoking. The evidence is analysed from the mortality statistics for the UK in 2002.




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