5 ways to prepare yourself to quit smoking

To begin with, this article is primarily for all those brave hearts who are considering quitting smoking. Believe us when we say this, we know it’s tough! But we also want you to know that we are with you on this journey that you’ve embarked on – The journey to a tobacco-free life. You have all our support that we can offer!

Since our doctors and experts understand that quitting smoking is difficult, they often talk about the importance of being ready and mentally prepared. Here are a few tips to prepare yourself to quit smoking:

1.       Decide if you’re ready to quit!

This is the toughest part of the journey you have embarked on. Maybe you’ve already made up your mind and have taken your last puff today. That’s great news! Maybe you haven’t. That’s OK too. Some day you may want to quit. This information will still help you. The first step is to know that you will never be fully ready. Addictions are difficult that way. However, on the brighter side, this means that you will always be as ready as you can be.

2.       If you’re not ready, reconsider your choices!

Think about how expensive cigarettes are and if you could spend that money on some recreational hobby or even a healthier lifestyle, how much would it affect you positively. Consider how much your lifespan is reduced by smoking, and how your smoking affects other people’s lives.

As you ponder on these deeper aspects of smoking beyond the instant nicotine fix, you will find yourself increasingly ready to lead a tobacco-free life.

3.       Figure out your reasons

Knowing why you want to actually quit will help you stay true to your resolution. Your health being the first and the foremost reason to quit, it will help if you want to be good role model for your family and kids.

Often responsibility is a good reason to not give into the temptation of ‘Just this one cigarette!’ At the same time, the best reasons are those that come from within you, rather than external factors and motivations.  So try to find more internal reasons and consider spending your financial savings in something that would give you a greater high than tobacco. Treat yourself with music, plays, books, a small weekend getaway or something else that would use up the money you just saved!

4.       Figure out your steps in quitting

This is important! Everyone needs a plan and a roadmap to success. You may want to go cold turkey, or you may want to reduce gradually. You may want to use anti-nicotine medicines or electronic cigarettes. Consult your physician, ask them for advice. Develop a support system that would not let you indulge and would remind you of your resolve if you want to indulge. We all know that the ultimate resolve and the desire to quit have to come from within oneself. However, it helps to have a plan and a support system.

5.       Know the pit falls

There are side effects to quitting. However, believe it or not, there are no side effects worse than the effects that tobacco is causing on your body. Some of them are weight gain, the possibility of restarting smoking, or nicotine withdrawal.  The more you understand this effects, the better planning you will be able to do. Also, it will help you prepare more to tackle these side effects and quit with relative ease.

Beyond anything, if you need someone to reach out to, do write to us and we will offer you all the support that’s possible to help you deal with quitting.

These 5 tips will surely help you quit smoking !

At Core Cancer Foundation, we understand that it’s not easy to quit. In fact most of our beneficiaries claim that quitting is the hardest thing they’ve done in their life. However, the good news is that no one has to quit alone. The journey is full of supporters and your doctor, counselor, friends, family all form a part of this support system. In this article, we’ve tried to collate some tips for you to quit smoking.

Get Ready

Getting ready helps! While any day is a good day to quit and stop smoking, it helps if you can plan in advance. You may want to fix a date, a period in your life when it won’t be too full of stress for you. In the meanwhile, cut down on smoking before this date. Get rid of lighters, ashtrays, spit cups and the likes. Talk to your family, friends and partner. Decide that you won’t let people smoke when in your house. You may want to avoid settings and friends prone to increased smoking for a short while.

Use Medicines

 Medicines can help with stress and cravings. Stress is actually one of the biggest reasons why people often return to smoking. The withdrawal symptoms at times can be too much to deal with.

Medicines can actually double your chances of quitting. Nicotine gums, patches or lozenges can be bought over the counter. You may also want to ask your doctor to prescribe medicines for you.

Going Cold Turkey

After your quit date, try not to smoke at all. Not even a single puff. Avoid smoking triggers, which could range from friends who smoke or consumption of alcohol to stress. Prevent even a slip (oh it’s just this one cigarette!) or a relapse (Don’t give up, not yet!)

Don’t keep cigarettes in your car or at your home. But most importantly, if you do slip, try to stay calm. Remember that you have made a plan, you have quit for good and that it may be hard, but it’s not impossible. As long as you’re not indulgent, you will be able to overcome temptation slowly.

Change Your Routine

Try to change your routine. For instance a lot of people tend to smoke after meals. Taking a walk instead can help. Similarly, a lot of people smoke on coffee breaks. Trying to drink herbal tea even if more than your usual numbers of coffee is an alternative you can consider. Changing your routine helps your body and mind break out of the patterns that trigger your smoking habits.

Get Support

 You can look for help with the local anti-smoking, anti – tobacco groups. Then, there are toll-free help lines, free handheld, tablet or smartphone apps, internet programs, doctors, therapists or nurses for counseling, support groups of people who have quit.

The idea is to use everything and anything as a tip to help you quit smoking and be tobacco free for life. After all, a tobacco free life is worth the effort!

5 Myths about quitting smoking

Like any other habit in this world, smoking also comes with its own set of myths. However, the sad part is that like all other myths, the myths around smoking aren’t that harmless. They actually affect your health adversely. As a result, it is important to dispel them for everyone’s good. At Core Cancer Foundation, we tried to find the five most common and popular myths around smoking. Our doctors also have attempted to dispel them and tell us the real facts.

Myth 1 – I have a lot of other healthy habits in general. They may compensate for my smoking.

Not true!

It’s wonderful to have healthy habits, but honesty, proper nutrition and lots of exercise doesn’t compensate for your smoking habits. The amount of toxins that go and accumulate in your body through smoking, cannot be reduced or neutralized by your healthy habits

The health risks commonly associated with smoking cannot be mitigated by healthy diet and exercising. Smoking causes risk to every single organ system in your body. It is absolutely not realistic to think that there is a perfect lifestyle that can counteract the effects of smoking. Even a truck load of vitamins and diet supplements every day would not undo the effects of tobacco according to medical experts.

Myth 2 – I have smoked for so long that the damage is done already and there’s no going back really.

Not true!

Smoking harms you and the damage is cumulative. It means the longer you smoke, the greater is your risk for life-threatening ailments. However, quitting at any age is going to be beneficial. According to doctors, even if some quits at 70, they will still benefit from quitting. The day you stop smoking, the benefits start.

Within a month, your lung capacity increases and you feel like you have more air, because you really do have more air. You start breathing easy, panting less. Ithin a year of stopping the risk for heart attacks is reduced by 50 %. Effectively, smokers who quit before an age of 35 actually prevent 90 % of health risks that are caused by smoking. Similarly a smoker who quits before 50 actually reduces the risk of their death before the age of 65, by 50 % as compared to someone who continues to smoke.

Myth 3 – Switching to ‘light’ cigarettes is less risky.

Not true again!

 Commonly observed patterns in smokers demonstrate that those who smoke the mild or light labels of cigaretters actually compensate for the lower tar and nicotine levels by inhaling more deeply or smoking a larger number of cigarettes.  As a result, the amount of killing components consumed in a lot of these cases is actually higher; thanks to a higher number of cigarettes being smoked to compensate for lower per cigarette levels. Frankly, tobacoo in itself is good enough to kill you, there’s no need for adding anything to it (in reference to ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ cigarettes).

Myth 4 – Quitting smoking will cause stress and that’s unhealthy for me!

Like really?

 If you believe that lie, you need to do some serious thinking. First things first, yes, tobacco withdrawal is stressful. But less stressful than having cancer, or emphysema or some other life threatening disease!

Secondly, there is no evidence that the withdrawal stress has long-term negative effects. In fact most smokers, who quit, actually begin exercising more, eating better,  and feel better about themselves in general. They reach a better mental space, save on the money that they take out of the family budget and spend towards smoking. On an average, a pack – a day smoking typically costs  not less than Rs. 50,000 every year!

Myth 5 – The weight gain after quitting is as unhealthy!

Not true once again!

 True, there is weight gain. However, on an average, the smokers who quit usually gain an average of 14 pounds. 7 Kgs isn’t a huge lot of weight to lose. Also, the risks attached to the extra weight are very minor as compared to the risk of continuing to smoke, doctors suggest.

In short, quitting is healthy in every situation, no matter when you start. All side effects to quitting are actually very insignificant in comparison to smoking itself. If you wish to consult one of our doctors / counselors or to support us in our anti-smoking awareness activities, do reach out to us at Core Cancer Foundation.

Quitting Smoking - Why Quit?

Hi There,

Finally we decided that when we have so many experts at Core Cancer Foundation who understand what tobacco can do to human body and how difficult it can be to quit, we decided that we should create more awareness about it! Here's the first article in this series - 

When it comes to quitting smoking, one of the most significant barriers is the lack of motivation. Effectively, this means that most people are so addicted that they can’t see any point in quitting. However, counselors and therapists have proven that when people realize that smoking harms them not just physically, but also on so many other levels, it helps in quitting smoking. So, if you’re making a plan to quit or are considering why to quit smoking, this article may actually give you some insights.

To begin with, you’re probably already aware that smoking is injurious to your health and that it causes diseases related to heart or lungs. You’re potentially also aware that should you quit smoking, you will be able to reduce your risk of getting a heart or a lung disease significantly.

The probability of smokers dying sooner than their non-smoker counterparts is almost 50 %. Also, on an average, smokers die at least 13 – 14 years sooner than non-smokers.  So let’s look at some major categories of benefits from quitting smoking.

Decrease in Risks:

• Smoking causes early death. Hence quitting smoking reduces the risk of early death.

• Strokes and heart attacks. Within 2 years of quitting, the risk of heart attacks reduces by half.

• Lung cancer and other lung diseases like emphysema are less likely to affect you, if you quit smoking.

• Quitting slowly also reduces your risk for developing various other cancers like that of the larynx, throat, mouth, intestines, esophagus, kidney, bladder and pancreas.

• Quitting also leads to a significant decrease in reproductive, sexual and pregnancy related complications.

• Within the first 2 to 4 weeks after you leave smoking, you will notice that your energy, shortness of breath and asthma symptoms will start getting better. In fact you may actually feel contrary in the first week, since lungs try to clean themselves immediately after quitting. So, there may be more than usual coughing in the first week or two.

Similarly, quitting smoking affects not just you but also the people around you positively. For instance:

The health risks will be reduced for your family members, since they will not be smoking passively.

The secondary and tertiary smoke is less likely to affect your family, friends and colleagues. They will be affected lesser.

• If you quit, it will be like setting a good, strong example in front of your children. If your teens are already smoking, they will then smoke less. If your kids don’t smoke yet, there’s a high likelihood that they will not start smoking, should you quit.

• In case of women who quit smoking, the problem of underweight babies and problem pregnancies reduces.

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One needs to remember that it’s best to quit tobacco in every form. Even the rub or the dip form, and using cigars, pipes, sheesha, hukkah, chillum, or chewing tobacco is equally harmful. The only difference is that this affects your oral cavity, gums, teeth and larynx more than lungs or heart. However, we need to remember that cancer is cancer, no matter the form!

Also, if you’re a teenager, the sooner you quit the better it is, since it’s difficult to quit, once you get hooked to it. While it may not seem as important right now, in reality, the longer you use it, the greater is your risk for addiction. So quit now!