Despite the widespread knowledge about the many dangers and health risks of smoking, recent statistics show that 25 to 30 percent of college students continue to puff away.
For a non-smoker, the sight of someone standing out in the freezing cold to just have a cigarette must border on the ludicrous. Why would someone want to endure the nasty weather of a central Pennsylvania winter to inhale hot smoke that makes them more susceptible to colds, bronchitis, pneumonia and the flu, not to mention long-term effects like heart disease and cancer?
The answer is that quitting smoking is a hard, sometimes very hard thing to do! While 30 to 40 percent of smokers attempt to quit smoking every year, less than 5 percent will succeed when they try to go cold turkey. The key to raising this percentage is using a variety of behavioral and pharmacological aids that have been proven to help people stop smoking, and just as importantly, stay cigarette-free for the rest of their lives.
One of the main chemical constituents of tobacco is nicotine. This substance -- which is also a great insecticide -- is what gives tobacco its unique ability to produce both a calming and a stimulating effect. It is also what makes tobacco so addicting. Nicotine does all these things by affecting certain areas in the brain, specifically what's known as the pleasure center. This area in the brain is activated by a neurochemcial called dopamine, and it's believed that nicotine acts in such a way that it both enhances the effects of and increases the amount of dopamine in the pleasure center.
One way then to help people stop their cigarette habit is to find a way to deliver nicotine to the brain and body without the use of tobacco. Today, there are several ways to accomplish this.
If you want to quit smoking, you can go to any drug store or pharmacy (including the pharmacy at University Health Services in Ritenour) and get either nicotine gum or nicotine patches. The choice of either using the patch or the gum depends on a person's own cigarette habit and ease of use.
The patch is certainly easier to use, because you just slap one on in the morning and leave it on for 24 hours; during that time, the patch delivers a continuous dose of nicotine to your body, which hopefully will decrease your cravings for a cigarette.
However, people who smoke get their nicotine via cigarettes in "bursts" every time they smoke and not on a continuous basis; because of this, some people prefer to use nicotine gum, since it delivers nicotine to the body much in the same way as a cigarette does.
Both the patch and the gum are over-the-counter medications, meaning that a doctor's prescription is not needed.
There is also a nicotine inhaler that works like a cigarette (minus, of course, the smoke and all the other nasty ingredients in tobacco) to deliver nicotine. As of now, the inhaler is only available with a prescription.
Another way to help decrease cigarette cravings is to increase levels of dopamine in the brain (because this is what's believed to give nicotine its addicting qualities). This can be done through the use of a prescription medication called Zyban. Like the nicotine inhaler, Zyban is only available with a prescription.
Students who are interested in quitting smoking are encouraged to take advantage of services available from University Health Services. Don't try to go it alone.
You can make an appointment to be seen by a clinician at University Health Services who can help you decide what would be the best way for you to quit smoking. Through pharmacological aids such as nicotine replacement therapies and/or medications such as Zyban, the struggle to give up cigarettes can at least be made easier, and both the short and long-term health effects will make the effort well worth the cost.
Or you can sign-up before Feb. 1 for the Quit and Win Challenge, a month-long smoking cessation program offered by the UHS Office of Health Promotion and Education.
Whichever option you choose, you will be the winner if you quit the habit!
