Find out more about whether nicotine patches work in my blog articles below.
Gentle reader, let me ask you a hypothetical question. If you were in the unhappy position of being a smoker (i.e., nicotine addict), and you wanted to escape this predicament, do you think it would be a good idea to put more nicotine into your body before you even tried to quit? I have written before about this [...]
It’s an unfortunate fact that many smokers, although they dislike smoking and wish they didn’t have to do it, find the prospect of quitting very difficult. Therefore it’s understandable that they seek help in how to stop smoking, including using nicotine patches . In theory, all that smokers need to do is to stub out their last cigarette [...]
A fool and his money are soon parted—old English proverb. Modern version: There’s one born every minute. Whether it’s a seemingly miraculous cure for hair loss, type 2 diabetes, erectile dysfunction, or a recently rediscovered ancient formula guaranteed to abolish unhappiness, it’s all to be found on the internet. The spiel is always the same: a video that [...]
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced it has awakened to the interesting idea that the way to help people quit smoking is for them to have a wider range of ‘products’ available in addition to so-called nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The FDA recognises that NRT (nicotine-containing gum, patches, and lozenges) is of limited effectiveness and [...]
The 2017 version of Stoptober, as they call it, finished on 28th October. The idea was that if smokers could be encouraged and supported not to smoke for twenty-eight days, they would be 'five times more likely to quit for good'. Those who signed up received daily messages of the following kind: If you're using stop smoking aids, [...]
Since I'm on their mailing list, I've once again started receiving notices of the forthcoming 2017 version of the so-called Stoptober anti-smoking effort put out by Public Health England (part of the UK Department of Health). It’s not my intention to mock this campaign. Smoking is a serious problem and anything that helps people to quit is to [...]
When I used to work in obstetrics (care of pregnant women) certain routine tests were carried out at each attendance, such as checking the urine and measuring the blood pressure. The reason was that these tests can give early warning of serious problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and then the appropriate action could be taken. [...]
Gentle reader, bear with me until l come to the bit where I disclose the amazing revelation that recently came upon me. Now, the following is from the website of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), quoting the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE): While recognizing that quitting smoking is always the best option for [...]
1. Fear Horrible pictures on cigarette packs and emphasizing that smoking causes cancer and heart disease assume people smoke because of ignorance of the consequences. This is not so. Everyone these days knows smoking is harmful to health. Scare tactics have relatively little effect because they don’t take into account the main reason people smoke: nicotine addiction, which [...]
‘Smokefree’ is a catchy neologism used by the NHS Smokefree campaign. It’s supported by Public Health England which is part of the UK government’s Department of Health. So it’s quite kosher. But what’s this? The Leicester City Stop Smoking Service at a quick glance looks similar: As we can see, it offers not just any old licensed products [...]
Gentle reader, forgive my cynicism, but here we have another example of what might be called ‘The Hard Way to Quit Smoking’, this time from the website of New York City Government. I've put selected quotes in italics and added comments that an imaginary smoker might make as he or she reads through the site. The title is [...]
As an example of everything that’s wrong with the orthodox approach to smoking cessation we need look no further than an online feature from Helpguide.org called How to Quit Smoking – A Guide to Kicking the Habit for Good. This is wrong from the very first word. You don’t need a how-to guide to quitting smoking. You just [...]
‘Action on Smoking and Health’ (ASH) is a charity set up by the Royal College of Physicians of the UK. It’s supported by those worthy bodies, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK. ASH's website informs us that it’s ‘a campaigning public health charity that works to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco.’ So far so good. [...]
The distinguished medical journal, The Lancet, in June 2016 reported the results of a huge multinational collaborative effort to investigate the risks of psychiatric side-effects of two drugs used in smoking cessation: varenicline (Champix®) and bupropion (Zyban®); no evidence of increased harm was found compared with nicotine patches and placebo (dummy) treatments. This must have been good news [...]
NRT, let me remind you, means so-called nicotine replacement therapy. Why ‘so-called’? Because nicotine is not a replacement for anything, nor is nicotine being replaced with something, so the name is wrong. It really means cigarette replacement but could equally well and more accurately be called nicotine maintenance therapy (NMT). The idea is that, since stopping smoking is [...]
Last year in a little town in New York state I had occasion to visit a friendly neighbourhood pharmacy. There I chanced upon a pamphlet with the inviting title, Let’s Quit Together. In case one might wonder what the ‘quit’ refers to it tells you in the next sentence with a question: ‘Are you ready to quit smoking?’ [...]
If a doctor were to call himself a tobacco treatment specialist what would you think he does? It’s ambiguous. Is he treating a disease called tobacco, similarly to the way in which a cancer treatment specialist is obviously someone who treats cancer? Or, if you talk of an acupuncture treatment specialist, it’s clearly a practitioner of acupuncture who [...]
Curing someone of smoking is easy, in my experience. However, treating alcoholism is a different matter. It’s not difficult to cure alcoholism – it’s impossible. Let me hasten to add that there are many things that can and should be done to help people with an alcohol problem. In this endeavor it’s important to keep in mind an [...]
What does the US National Cancer Institute have to say about stopping smoking? On their website there’s a long section titled ‘How To Handle Withdrawal Symptoms and Triggers When You Decide To Quit Smoking’. This implies that you may indeed suffer such symptoms and that ‘triggers’ are also something you will need to be aware of. These are [...]
If you're a smoker trying, that is, failing, to stop, what help is out there? The orthodox approach, promulgated by the medical profession, is called, curiously, nicotine replacement therapy. Does this mean nicotine is a replacement for something or is the nicotine going to be replaced with something? What is meant, of course, is cigarette replacement: cigarettes are [...]