WOULD-BE NONSMOKERS, DON'T BE DISCOURAGED.Byline: Damaris Christensen Medical Tribune tribune, in ancient Rome, one of various officers. The history of the office of tribune is closely associated with the struggle of the plebs against the patrician class to achieve a more equitable position in the state. From c.508 B.C. News Service The results of a new study on smoking cessation smoking cessation Public health Temporary or permanent halting of habitual cigarette smoking; withdrawal therapies–eg, hypnosis, psychotherapy, group counseling, exposing smokers to Pts with terminal lung CA and nicotine chewing gum are often ineffective. should not discourage people from trying to kick the habit, experts say. The study, published in the February issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine The Archives of Internal Medicine is a bi-monthly international peer-reviewed professional medical journal published by the American Medical Association. Archives of Internal Medicine , found that smokers who smoked no cigarettes on their quit date were up to 10 times more likely to quit smoking permanently than those who had even one cigarette on that first day. ``People learn to quit smoking over time,'' said Dr. John R. Hughes, a professor of psychiatry psychiatry (səkī`ətrē, sī–), branch of medicine that concerns the diagnosis and treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders, including major depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. at the University of Vermont in Burlington. ``It's like riding a bicycle,'' he said. ``People often assume that just because they've tried to quit and haven't, they can't. But the difference between people who stop smoking and those who don't is often the number of times they've tried.'' Smokers who try to quit and don't make it past the first day should not give up, he stressed. If quit-smoking aids such as group therapy and over-the-counter nicotine nicotine, C10H14N2, poisonous, pale yellow, oily liquid alkaloid with a pungent odor and an acrid taste. It turns brown on exposure to air. skin patches skin patch, transdermal patch, or transdermal delivery system, adhesive patch used to deliver a controlled dose of a drug through the skin over a period of time. don't work, ``don't struggle with it for a week ... go in and see a physician,'' he said. ``The average person has to make between three and five serious attempts to stop smoking,'' said Doug Jorenby, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison. ``A person should look at a slip as a learning experience,'' he said. ``The most useful thing they can do is ask, `What got me to slip? And what can I do to change that?' '' Smokers should take a quit date seriously and plan for it, Jorenby added. ``But smoking on your quit date is not a guarantee of failure,'' he said. |
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