The Facts About Smoking – Scientific Research & Clinical Hypnotherapy Outcome – 9th November 2009

The Cancer Council of Western Australia released the assessment of a report in October 2009 that two independent health economists prepared that reveals the $31 billion social cost of smoking to the Australian economy.

This, health groups say, is a mandate for tobacco taxes to be increased to further encourage people to give up the smoking habit.  And whilst tobacco companies estimate cigarette and tobacco retailers provided 500,000 Australian jobs, it is argued that the study found the industry was a minor and declining contributor to manufacturing output and employment, with profits largely remitted to parent companies overseas.  It also ignored that people who stopped smoking would now be able to spend this money on other goods and services, which in turn caused more employment and tax revenues. ⁽¹⁾

New research suggests that smoking increases the production of osteopontin in the lungs and that this contributes to the development of smoking-related lung disease. ⁽²⁾ Lifestyle factors like diet, smoking and obesity account for an estimated 30 per cent of kidney disease cases leaving genetic and other auto-immune conditions as the major cause. ⁽³⁾

Researchers at University College London and St George’s University of London, say that smokers are putting their loved ones at risk of heart attacks by smoking in the home.  Whilst the decline in smoking together with restrictions on smoking in public places means we are far less exposed to tobacco smoke, and this has resulted in a dramatic fall in the number of non-smokers being at risk of a heart attack.  This isn’t the case when a person is living with someone who smokes in the home.  It does show that people are now more at risk of exposure to other peoples smoke in their own homes than in public places, and whilst we cannot stop people smoking in their own home, the researchers urge smokers to think of the risk they’re exposing their non smoking friends and relatives to when they have a cigarette in the house. ⁽⁴⁾ In a population-based study of 1,209 women in Beijing, China, researchers found a 67 percent increase in peripheral Artery Disease in those exposed to secondhand smoke.  The women were 60 years and older and have never smoked.⁽⁵⁾

In a Florida State University study, researchers say that teenagers who smoke could be setting themselves up for depression later in life.  The researchers found that nicotine given to adolescent rats induced a depression-like state characterised by a lack of pleasure and heightened sensitivity to stress in their adult lives.  The findings they suggest might the same for humans. ⁽⁶⁾

The association between tobacco smoke and cancer deaths – beyond lung cancer deaths – has been strengthened by a study analysis that has linked smoking to more than 70 percent of the cancer death burden in 2003.  This study provides support that the full impacts of tobacco smoke, including secondhand smoke has been overlooked whilst examining other potential factors such as diet and environmental contaminants.⁽⁷⁾

Side effects of any manufactured medicinal compound can produce side effects of their own that can be as horrendous as the symptom they are intending to alleviate.  One such story on the side effects of Chanpix that was said to block nicotine from attaching to your brain receptors, so that it stop you receiving any pleasure from cigarettes at all, reduces withdrawal cravings, whilst it releases dopamine tells such a story.   Insomnia and nightmares, crying, sadness, anger, suicidal thoughts and blackouts were the symptoms described here.  The small-print booklet that accompanies all drugs from Pfizer now says “All patients … should be observed for neuropsychiatric symptoms including changes in behaviour, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideating and suicidal behaviour.”  (Previously the fine type had listed suicidal ideation as a rare adverse reaction.) ⁽⁸⁾

And so the list goes on as there are numerous more documented studies that highlight the dangers and not seen effects of health issues associated with smoking.  It is certainly not new that long-term exposure to compounds found in smoke can lead to both cardiovascular and lung disease.  Although lung exposure to cigarette smoke leads to immune cell recruitment and tissue fibrosis, how cigarette smoke causes these changes is largely unknown⁽²⁾, nor that pharmaceutical intervention has potential side effects of its own.  I have had client’s that suffered psoriasis as a child which they outgrew only to have it come back through the use of patches to quit smoking, whilst others on Champix felt anxiety and nausea as described above.  So when I as everyone else can only subscribe to their own experiences and not that of others.

From my own perspective:

Whilst scientific people tell us ‘this’ or ‘that’ through research outcomes, let me remind the reader that nothing ‘new’ ever came about by holding on to the ‘old’.  It was only a comparatively short time ago that the medical establishment told us that when we got to a certain age our brain was hard-wired and could no longer change.  Now a decade ago, new research has turned this theory inside out.  And so it has been from as far back as things have been documented and will continue to be as long as man exists on this earth and has an inquiring mind.

Will we one day prove that each cell in our body has the total of the whole, i.e. even everything that is in our brain?   If we know that Dolly the sheep was cloned by English embryologist, Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland from a mammary cell from the udder, then to me it seems highly feasible.

I have now dealt with helping people quit the smoking habit for 20 years.  So whilst this isn’t ‘Scientific Research’ it is ‘Clinical Outcome’ from my own experience.

Here are some of my observations:

• Through the use of hypnotherapy most people are able to give up the smoking addiction in a single 1.1/2 hour session.
• To be able to do this, it has to be a habit.
• If it is more than a habit,
  • i.e. it is now a coping mechanism, then the reason you now need to smoke to deal with that mechanism requires to be dealt with so that you will release the habit without willpower, craving or withdrawal.
• Some people go back to smoking sometimes years later even though they do not/and have not had any craving or withdrawal since they gave up smoking.
• When you deal with the subconscious, you can forget about what clinical research tells you, i.e. it takes 4 days for nicotine to leave the body, another 4 plus days for all the other 4,000 chemicals to leave.  Your subconscious doesn’t care about research, it is able to put in; no craving, no withdrawal symptoms, just not wanting to smoke anymore.
• Not all hypnotherapists have the know-how or experience to do this, and not all clients believe that they can do this.
• A client has to WANT to do this for themselves, otherwise they have already set themself up for failure.  If they want to do this, then it is my job to make sure that they achieve.
• It is important for the client to bring with them their past history of events so that you can check with the subconscious if any of these events still hold emotional content that needs to be released to be a non-smoker.
  • i.e. your parents split up when you were 14, you are now friends with both parents – how did you feel at 14?  These feelings are still inside but at a deeper level where you have no idea if that is still affecting you.  Same goes if you were sexually abused, bullied at school etc. etc.
• A second session is a must to ensure that the client is a non-smoker.  Whilst I have clients from my early days that have been non-smokers for the length of my career from the first session, there may be others that never came back who probably think that hypnotherapy didn’t work for them.

If a person in authority says that there is no evidence to support hypnotherapy as a quit-smoking method, then they have their own agenda.  There is plenty of evidence if you do your research, although I believe these outcomes could be improved with more knowledge.  If a person in authority says it’s not possible to disassociate the psychological aspects of smoking (or any other) addiction from the physical, then they don’t know very much about hypnotherapy – change is as easy as changing your mind.⁽⁹⁾

The hard bit is the wanting to change it at the subconscious level.  Find out the reason your subconscious doesn’t want to change, help it deal with and eliminate that reason and you will find change taking place.

References:

⁽¹⁾ MedicalSearch, (2009, October 22), “$31 billion is cost of smoking to economy, report says”. http://www.medicalsearch.com.au/News/viewrecord.aspx?id=41595

⁽²⁾American Journal of Pathology (2009, May 2). New Mediator Of Smoking Recruits. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 3,2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090424073725.htm

⁽³⁾MedicalSearch, (2009, April 1), Kidney deaths up 150pc as fatal heart attacks decline, http:/www.medicalsearch.com.au/News/viewrecord.aspx?id=37751

⁽⁴⁾Wiley-Blackwell (2009, February 14). Smokers Putting Their Loved Ones At Risk Of Heart Attacks. ScienceDaily. Retried February 14,2009, from http://www.scienedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090211101101714.htm

⁽⁵⁾American Heart Association (2008, September 23).  Secondhand Smoke Linked To Peripheral Artery Disease In Women. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09080922174632.htm

⁽⁶⁾Florida State University (2009, February 6).  Teen Smoking Could Lead To Adult Depression, Study Says. ScienceDaily, Retrieved February 7, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com./releases/2009/01/090129113323.htm

⁽⁷⁾ ScienceDaily, (2009, January 21),  Smoking Linked To Most Male Cancer Deaths. ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121144103.htm

⁽⁸⁾De Koff, D. (Feb 10, 2008) “This Is My Brain on Chantix” http://www.mymag.com/news/features/43892

⁽⁹⁾Fitzpatrick, K. (2009, September 25) A-Z Index of Health&Weelbeing. Hypnosis: fad or foolproof?  http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=867664