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Why should they quit?
Giving up smoking has huge health benefits. According to Cancer Research, the number of people who smoke has halved in the last 50 years and at the same time the number of incidences of lung cancer has also halved.
Prevention of other illnesses
What’s more, quitting will not just help prevent lung cancer. Smoking is also a major cause of heart disease and other serious issues including high blood pressure, infertility and ulcers. In fact, smoking kills around 114,000 people in the UK each year.
Quitting smoking will also save loads of money and can help them look younger.
Ways to quit
Smoking cigarettes is an addiction, and smokers are both physically and emotionally hooked. However, there are ways to quit smoking for good. As there are two parts to a tobacco addiction, they have to tackle both of those in order to be successful.
Tackling the physical addiction
Research has shown that nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) such as patches and chewing gum can be an effective way of dealing with cravings. NRT has been found to double their chances of quitting as it is not as addictive as cigarettes and of course doesn’t cause cancer.
Drawback
However, there is still a slight risk of becoming addicted to NRT so it is important to monitor how much they are using. Overall it is an effective way to cut down and ultimately quit.
A doctor can also prescribe an anti-depressant, Zyban, which doesn’t contain nicotine but cuts the body’s desire to smoke.
Tackling the physiological addiction
The most important thing is that they have to really want to quit and not just do it because they think it’s what others want.
One effective thing for them to do is to write a list of why they want to stop smoking. It could be that they want to play with their children more, that they want to save money or simply protect their health.Once they have done this, they need to keep the list with them at all times and look at it when they crave a cigarette.They should enlist the help of friends and family and willingly throw cigarettes away. Finally, the NHS has a number of free cessation services including support groups and one-on-one counselling which are very effective.