Stop Smoking - PocketMedic

If you quit using the support of a stop smoking service, you're four times more likely to have success than going it alone. I'm sure you're wondering when I'm going to start nagging you about smoking, but the truth is that's not what we're here for. Instead I'm going to introduce you to a fabulous woman. Her name's Cath Harrell and she's a smoking cessation practitioner. I help people when they want to or need to stop smoking to access the correct products, support and advice to help them. When you smoke you repeat your behaviour because you're addicted to the nicotine. Nicotine attaches to a receptor in your brain and a message is sent to your nerve endings and dopamine is released and you have a pleasure sensation. However in order to get that nicotine repeatedly you have to burn a cigarette and inhale it. Carbon monoxide is produced and that causes your heart and lungs to work harder. You've got tar then left in your lungs and the tar can cause other diseases like emphysema and the irritants in the smoke cause exacerbations of asthma and bronchitis and you might find that your ill health starts from there. The safest ingredient in a cigarette, apart from the paper on the outside, is the nicotine. It's actually not harmful to you, it's just addictive, and it's why you return to smoking time and time again. What we do is we take the nicotine out of your system, but we replace it by safe medicinal nicotine in an acceptable form for you, like a patch or a mouth spray, a a mouth film, an inhalator, various types of lozenges and gums or a nasal spray. These you can take as little or as much as you need throughout the day and usually the levels you're allowed are very generous. If you're in the United Kingdom, you will have a stop smoking service near you, which should have an 0800 number for you to call, and they will pass your details on to the practitioner in your area. You'll have a no obligation first interview with a stop smoking practitioner. At that point you'll make the choice, do you wish to quit? What you would do is choose a quit date and upon that quit date when you go to bed that evening you would put your patch on. You use that for six weeks, also the oral product during that time. On your seventh week you'll reduce the strength of the patch for two weeks and then a lower strength patch for two weeks and then no patch at all after that if it's right for you. If your practitioner thinks that you would benefit from a little extension at any stage, discuss that with them and they will be able to arrange that for you, because we do go at the quitters pace. It isn't going to be 100% stress free, but if you've got the support of people around you, the support of myself and the correct products, you will be able to get through your first day, then your first week and hopefully up to a month and then 12 weeks in stages. If you have a chronic chest disease, you will feel the benefits of stopping smoking within 48 hours and after 12 weeks, the chest will have started to benefit from not having smoke and carbon monoxide in there. The work the heart does and the work the lungs are doing to get oxygen around your body is made much easier when you stop smoking. If you've had a recent diagnosis of COPD, lung cancer, any cancer at all, you might think well the only pleasure I have now is smoking. We do have to tell you to people the treatment and the progression of the disease will be greatly helped if they can stop smoking with our support and also the prognosis can turn round as well after you have managed to stop smoking. This is particularly true of cardiac and lung diseases where you can actually reduce your blood pressure, help your heart and help your lungs by stopping smoking, simply stopping smoking. So access the service, get the advice, get the products, choose your quit date and make a start. Every journey begins with one step and normally we do say that phone call to the stop smoking practitioner is your first step. You