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Home / Issues / № 2, 2013

Materials of the conference "EDUCATION AND SCIENCE WITHOUT BORDERS"

How to Give Up Smoking on Your Own: New Methods of Dealing with Smoking
Lukyanyonok P.I.

Traditionally, efforts to fight against smoking were directed at the male part of population, as in the 1980s and 1990s of the previous century the extent to which it was spread was significantly higher there in comparison to the female part. Thus, according to our data, smoking as a risk factor among the workers and office employees of the Tomsk region was revealed in connection with 67,5% of men. The highest per cent was found out in the age group of 30-39 and constituted 64%. With the age growing, the number of smokers among men was getting lower and at the age of 50-59 it made up 50%, while at the age of 60 and over, only 25% of men continued to smoke. Giving up smoking in the older age groups was connected with growth of cardiovascular and cerebral diseases and following medical recommendations. The number of those who gave up smoking made up 13% of the population.

In the female population the number of smokers made up 10,7%, while the highest per cent was connected with the age group of 20-29 and made up 17,7%. In the older age group the number of smoking diminished sharply and at the age of 50-59 it was 0,7% [9].

At present this tendency is characteristic of the whole world, but in some countries, e.g. Ireland, this correlation is equal, while in Denmark there are more women-smokers than men-smokers [2].

The growth of smoking among women is the tragedy of mankind, as it is considered that women bear more responsibility for the reproductive health of generations. Growth of smoking among women has led to steadfast growth of cancer. Thus, according to the data of Sather [2001] in the USA the rate of lung cancer during the previous 60 years grew by 600%! [21].

In spite of the fact that on the whole smoking among women is less spread, the negative social and psychological significance of female smoking, as far as its influence on children and teenagers is concerned, is superior to that of male smoking, because mother's smoking is a greater object for imitation in comparison with father's smoking [20]. At the present moment it is considered that there is a tendency of this index growing; in comparison with the 1980s of the past century smoking among women became more spread in some regions and made up a figure almost three times greater, women being involved in the process at an early age [3].

Today science has established rather unequivocally that smoking, inhaling tobacco smoke is equal to voluntary poisoning of one's own body as well as the bodies of the surrounding people.

In addition to nicotine, tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide, hydrocianic acid, hydrogen sulphide, carbonic acid, ammonia, nitrogen, essential oils, piridinial bases and even radioactive isotopes [4].

A smoking person inhales 15, 000 lethal doses during his or her life, but as nicotine gets into the body by fractional doses, a habitual smoker does not reveal any symptoms of acute poisoning. It has been proved that nicotine and the poisonous substances the tobacco smoke contains infringe upon the activity of practically all the systems of the human body.

Smoking increases the risk factor of developing hypertension and ischemic heart disease in 4-6 times, and in combination with other 2 or 3 risk factors of probability of developing ischemic heart disease, which is the main «supplier» of myocardial infarction, in 10-13 times.

Smokers die suddenly of cardiovascular diseases 5 - 8 times more often than non-smokers, and lung cancer develops in their bodies 10 times as often as in those of non-smoking persons. A smoking person decreases the length of his or her life by 8-10 years [13].

Nowadays dependence on nicotine is considered to be a disease which should be treated, therefore giving up smoking as well as treating tobacco dependence is a topical task giving a chance to extend the length of life.

Nicotine penetrates easily through the cerebro-vascular barrier and, spreading in the brain tissue, gets accumulated in the cortex, hypothalamus, thalamus, midbrain and brainstem. Interacting with the nicotine cholinergic receptors of the brain, it activates them and leads to the release of catecholamines, including acetilcholine, noradrenaline, dopamine, serotonine, beta-endomorphine and glutamate [11]. As a result of this activation the feeling of greater working ability appears as well as lowering of alarm and sense of hunger. Together with the development of tolerance there begins a stable oppression of the functions of the central nervous system, and for keeping them at the habitual level one needs greater and greater number of cigarettes to achieve the same effect, and in this respect nicotine is similar to drugs: after halting its entrance into organism symptoms of withdrawal develop, which get at their maximum 3 days after refusal and usually last 3 or 4 weeks.

Modern technologies of struggle against smoking offer different approaches: from acupuncture to hypnosis or substitution therapy - medicinal therapy, chewing gums, inhalers, nicotine plasters. Possessing certain effectiveness, they are not free of side effects, it is sometimes difficult to choose the right dose, but in combination with psycotherapy and self-programming they make the effectiveness of smoking refusal higher by 30-40% [5, 10, 14].

Thus at present there is no doubt that smoking leads to premature aging and death. Is it possible to give up smoking by oneself? Or is it better to ask a doctor for help? According to the inquiry of the experts of the CART, specific methods of treating smoking are less effective than the unspecific approaches (persuasion, suggesting a determination to give up smoking, accepting positive motivation towards giving up smoking together with clear realization of the negative effect of the harmful habit upon the organism) [1,15,16]. So, according to the data of a two-year-long observance of the population of three Northern California cities in the struggle against smoking the efficacy of individual conversations proved to be higher (by 42%) in the cases where personal positive motivation towards giving up smoking was created. Therefore the answer is simple: one can give up smoking, abandon it once and for all on one's own. And in the cases when the first indications of atherosclerosis appear, your memory gets worse, and especially if there is inclination towards the rising blood pressure, it is simply necessary to do it.

Every person with his age increasing and the functionality of his body accordingly decreasing begins to understand the harm done to it with nicotine. The research shows that the per cent of smoking people decreases with age. It shows that in the course of time people empirically come to the right conclusion and feeling that smoking changes from a pleasant thing into a burden at first only occasionally think about it, then make the first shy steps to give it up, and finally the common sense gets the upper hand. Under the burden of illnesses and complications, under the pressure of emotions the person gives up this harmful habit. As a rule, only those people continue to smoke who have a considerable «safety margin» and they continue to do it as long as they have it [9].

Below we suggest a variation of our own method of struggle against smoking, which is used in the process of prophylactic activities at the School for Patents with Hypertension in Tomsk. According to our data, its effectiveness can make up as high as 60-70%.

What to Begin with or Advice to Smokers and the Surrounding People

  1. Take it into account that smoking and a long life as well as a successful struggle against cardiovascular diseases are incompatible.
  2. A smoking person does not look well from the point of view of the surrounding people.
  3. At the moment of your smoking the surrounding people think you to be an uncultured, poorly educated person and look at you with censure.
  4. The surrounding people lose their wish to communicate with you.
  5. Lighting a cigarette, you commit an unethical act - give a bad example to children, become an involuntary conductor of this pernicious habit.
  6. You pollute the environment, influence the nature negatively. You are an enemy not only towards yourself, but also to everything alive around you.
  7. Unpleasant smell spreads from the smoking person. The smokers themselves do not feel it or feel it only in the morning. The surrounding people perceive the smell several metres from it. For the surrounding people it arouses the feeling of fastidiousness and nausea.
  8. Remember! To kiss a smoking person is practically the same as to lick an ashtray.
  9. Smoking is closely connected with the length of experience of smoking. The longer is the experience, the harder it is to give up the habit, the more difficult it is to gather strength by oneself to give it up. For a person who has just started to smoke, it would be more correct to give up smoking as soon as possible.
  10. A smoker with any length of experience can give up smoking without doing any harm to his or her body. It is important that the necessity to give up smoking should be quite clear to the person, proved and well justified, as well as PERCEIVED by him or her.
  11. The surrounding people should help the smoker give it up, irrespective of the fact whether the smoker is inclined to do it or not. They are obliged to remind the smoker here, there and everywhere of the harm of smoking, paying attention mainly to the ethic, esthetic and hygienic aspects mentioned above.
  12. On the part of the close relatives, familiar people and friends, the emphasis is to be made on the personality, lack of culture, disrespect towards the surrounding people. Don't create conditions of comfort for smokers!

How to Give up Smoking?

The most crucial stage for the people wishing to give up this bad habit is the moment of making conscious decision to give up smoking. The decision should be deeply inserted into subcortical formations, i.e. it should be dominant so that even if you are dreaming while sleeping and see yourself smoking, you should understand that it is only a dream and that you are not really smoking.

The decision you have made must be so strong that it could control you even when you are sleeping. The acceptance of such a solution ought to necessarily include a preparatory stage, lasting for about 7 days.

Beforehand, approximately 7 days before accepting the decision to give up smoking, you should select a day for yourself- the date of decision. It would be better if the day were your day out, but it mustn't be connected with any holiday or a solemn date. At the same time you should call it a special day, a day of health, or a solemn day of making your decision. You needn't inform anybody about it, it will be your small secret, your own invention, your own affair, and in the future it will be the day of your hope for perfection as a person.

So, the day has been chosen, the date has been selected. Now it is necessary to create motivation and programme of your behaviour.

Programming the decision, putting it into the subcortical formations, «sewing up» (finishing the creation of) the programme. This level corresponds to the influence on the person's mentality, it is similar to self-hypnosis, but at the same time these things have essential differences. For creating a positive motivation, «sewing up» the programme, it is necessary to keep the following terms:

1. To find, to select your favourite, automatic and well worked out reflex out of the corresponding mass of your skills. It may be a professional or sports one or of some other character. It is important that it should be a sort of hobby-reflex, for example, a sports one, a motion action brought to automatism. It will be necessary as a needle for the tailor in order to carry into the subcortical formations together with the reflex-hobby your accepted decision - the decision of 'no-smoking'.

2. The «sewing up» of the programme itself, or self-programming, must be carried out in a certain succession, with several conditions observed. For this purpose physiological states of the body, corresponding to dissociation of correlations between cortical and subcortical structures, are used. This moment for persons going in for autosuggestive training according to the methods by J. Schultz or E. Coué may be observed in the state of complete relaxation [6,7,8,18]. However, one can do without the preliminary 3-month stage of word formulas of suggestion of the type «my right arm is getting warm», « pleasant heaviness is spreading over the whole body», etc.

For a person who is hardly acquainted with the methods of autosuggestive training for «sewing up» a decision the so-called specific states of consciousness observed at the stage of complete muscular relaxation can be used [7,17]. One can use psychological transitions between the phases of quick and slow dreaming, i.e. those moments which can be observed straight before falling asleep (drowsiness, somnolence) and immediately after waking up in the morning.

The programming is effective both in the morning and in the evening before falling asleep, but it is better to start with the evening one.

Direct Programming

  1. Prepare for falling asleep, lie down on your back, close your eyes, relax, try to feel the heaviness of your arms and legs.
  2. Try to bring about the state of somnolence and those pleasant pictures in your consciousness which were the brightest during the day you have lived. Usually they arise by themselves and reflect the things which made the visual analyzer tired during the day. It is important that the image coming to the surface should be positively coloured.
  3. Leaning upon the picture experienced during the day and aroused in your consciousness, mentally move to the picture-hobby. Imagine yourself being a participant of the scene, visually, vividly, in motion and action. In our example - a sportsman, let's assume that he's a sambo wrestler or a karate master, carries out a hold action, strikes a blow, etc. At the same time imagine visually your reflex action brought to automatism and compare it with the process of finishing smoking, throwing away a cigarette you have begun or finished smoking.
  4. Repeat this action-reflex mentally, visually, 6-7 times. For convenience of creating the image and quick bringing about the state of somnolence before the beginning of self-programming, it is expedient to execute easy surface breathing and alternating tension of all groups of muscles in isotonic regime, similar to stretching.
  5. The visual reflex-hobby, being aroused and connected with the negative attitude towards smoking, must be strengthened by a short verbal command pronounced at exhalation.

The verbal command should correspond to a word-key, the meaning of which must include all the negative things concerning smoking, which have been read here. This word-command must be pronounced in the affirmative form, not including any double sense or negation. For example, you should pronounce to yourself «I'm giving up» and not «I shall not smoke», or «I shall give it up» instead of «I don't want, I shall not». Such a command or a word-key is followed by the appropriate visual image and, simultaneously with the command, by imagining the well-tried reflex-action, reflex-hobby.

Why is it necessary to tie together a well-tried, brought to automatism reflex the person has and the negative attitude to smoking? Because this kind of reflex is stable, positive, as a rule remembered by the cortical and subcortical formations for a long time and, consequently, not escaping while the time goes on. Its coordination with the decision makes the latter identical.

It would be better if the reflex were connected with motion activity. The word-command, in connection with this kind of reflex, penetrates into deep subcortical formation in the state of relaxation (meditation, somnolence), and is detained there much longer than at the usual variants of self-suggestion or autogenic training. By the day of making the decision six- or sevenfold repetition of the command in the morning and in the evening every day will have created a reflected centre of protective inhibition towards the habit of smoking in the cortex of the brain.

Thus approximately 7 days of labour over oneself will be needed to make a stable decision to give up smoking. Can we use only the state of somnolence in the morning or evening time for this purpose? Of course, not. If you have mastered the relaxation well and can go into it at any place and in any situation of rest, you can use the habits you have for strengthening the decision in question. The main thing is not to fall asleep without achieving the aim!

It would be necessary to underline that the number of training efforts does not play such an important role. It is individual for everybody and can depend upon the peculiarities of the memory of training persons. This method is acquired better by people possessing associative, visual kind of memory - artists and persons inclined to creative activities.

The decision made demands strengthening by way of repeating the command (in the states described above)! With the assumption that forgetting is typical of a living being, and that three days later memory keeps only about 15% of the material read the day before, repetition of the command after the seven-day cycle of programming must make up not less than once in three days. This form of working at oneself contributes to the formation of a stable temporal connection of the decision made and the given command, the mechanism of memory involved.

Stratification of this sort of commands will leave a trace in the cortex in the form of a uniform temporal sign which will realize your command subsequently. Thus a sort of «sewing up» the programme with a stable negative attitude towards smoking takes place, which serves as a reason for giving it up.

Some more pieces of advice will do no harm to a smoker:

  1. Don't carry cigarettes about with you, don't scrounge ones from the surrounding people and do not stay near smokers.
  2. Remember that only the first 2-3 puffs are pleasant, later on smoking goes on by habit, and at the end of it only a feeling of disgust appears.
  3. Try not to smoke a cigarette to the end. Smoke according to the rule: « A metre we smoke - at two we throw it».
  4. Select cigarettes with low content of nicotine.
  5. Keep your cigarette in the mouth as little as possible.
  6. Do not smoke on the go, at the moment when you are doing something pleasant (while reading, watching TV, etc).
  7. Sniff at something with a sharp odour, e.g. ether oils, fir-tree smell, at the moment of emerging a desire to have a smoke. Smells, by the way, may be used through olfactory bulbs for «sewing up the programme» and are used by some of the authors in their struggle against smoking [12].
    Make your motions more active. A quick change of activity, acceleration of the tempo of motion can be useful.
  8. Try to delay the moment of smoking, observe yourself and your desire from an outsider's viewpoint. Imagine that you will start smoking now, after smoking the cigarette you will again have the feeling of disgust at it and at yourself as a person who has not kept his/her promise. Just think, what is going to happen if you don't smoke? Concentrate on your pleasant feelings and good spirits which are usually observed before smoking. Try to retain your healthy image corresponding to your state before the moment of smoking - it will automatically reorganize you towards a refusal of smoking and strengthen your motivation.

Remember! In your struggle against smoking nobody can help you as actively as yourself. Believe in your forces, prove first of all to yourself that you can do it - you will respect yourself still more, having raised your prestige and elevated your personality.



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21. Women and Smoking. A report of the surgeon general-2001 //http:www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr-for women/ataglance.htm



Bibliographic reference

Lukyanyonok P.I. How to Give Up Smoking on Your Own: New Methods of Dealing with Smoking. International Journal Of Applied And Fundamental Research. – 2013. – № 2 –
URL: www.science-sd.com/455-24438 (29.03.2024).