“Smoking causes cancer”. “Smoking during pregnancy is dangerous for children”. “Smoking may kill”. These are few sentences written on my husband’s cigarette packages. Our elder son is reading these messages. He doesn’t know much about cancer and about death but his intuition whispered that smoking is a wrong choice. He took one package, showed it to his father and asked him to try to find the best way to stop smoking.

“Starting from tomorrow I will quit smoking even if the cigar helps me concentrating” was the answer. But he did not keep his promise.

Next day I remembered him about the promise he made and I asked him to find the best way to quit smoking I have received answers like “Lots of physicians are smoking” or “My grandparents smoked all their life, my mother smoked too”. I realized how difficult is for him not only to quit smoking but also to find the best way to quit smoking as from the very first years he lived among smokers. At the beginning he was a passive one but as years passed by he grew up and started smoking with his parents while drinking the morning coffee.

I have explained him that he has to find the best way to quit smoking as our kids are small and they still need his love and attention. As smoking means addiction to nicotine I have asked him to fix an appointment to our physician in order to see the long term effects of smoking. Luckily he has accepted.

During the meeting the physician explained the long term effects of smoking: pulmonary diseases, chronic coughing, difficulties in breading, heart attacks, lung cancer, bad immunity, problems with skin, teeth. He also realized how his smoking is affecting the kids as a passive smoker faces the same risks as an active one.

Together with our physician we have agreed that the best way to quit smoking for him was to go little by little that means to decrease the number of cigarettes on daily basis. He was advice to drink water or eat a fruit whenever he felt the need to smoke. Other useful advices, in order to keep his mind busy whenever he felt the need to light a cigarette, were to try to draw or read a magazine. We have also decided not to replace his addiction to nicotine with various medicines but to try some acupuncture sessions.

Acupuncture is an old Chinese method that is using the insertion of needles into various parts of body in order to restore the body’s life energy and balance. This method deals with subtle energy flows called CHI; any disruption in CHI affects health.

Even though he was skeptic and the idea of needles made him uncomfortable he went to the first session and, despite all the negative thought that he had, acupuncture helped him to relax without smoking. At the end of the sessions my husband wasn’t smoking at all and starting from then, twice a year he follows an acupuncture session just to restore the energy balance.

My husband also realized that even though the choice belonged to him, without the help and love of his family he wouldn’t have succeeded in finding the best way to quit smoking.

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Recent studies have shown up that more than 75% of active smokers would like to give up this habit and are continuously looking for the best way to quit smoking. While some of them are giving up without help, the other part is likely to succeed in finding the best way to give up smoking and cutting down, with lot of more or less qualified support as there is no single or fixed method proved to work. Certainly there are different ways for every different person.

Finding out the best way to quit smoking is important but it is not sufficient. The one that would like to give up smoking should always keep in mind the goal and should spend some time planning and preparing this important step.

Next to identifying the best way to quit smoking, the individual should be completely honest with himself as he has to put down the list of pro-s and contra-s that will help him to define his goal. This list has to be as wide as possible and he has to be completely honest. Hopefully the reasons for change will not outweigh the reasons not to as in the other case he might find it difficult to succeed.

Biggest part of those who had found out the best way to quit smoking is choosing to give up smoking little by little, on daily basis. Asking for help of the closest ones has been proven to be a very good idea. Talking with family and friends would help him to understand what they feel about this subject and how he should proceed in the future. Also the quitting smoker would have to find out the persons with whom he has to be more assertive or the persons that he might have to avoid in order to accomplish this goal. In the meantime he has to keep in mind that quitting smoking does not mean the lack of social life and that there are lots of methods that can help him to achieve the defined goal.

‘Nicotine stripes, nicotine chewing gum, acupuncture can help. Which is the best? Is it possible to become dependent on nicotine stripes?’ these are some of the frequently asked questions. But you know what? It is more difficult to find the best way to quit smoking.

The nicotine stripes are not giving the same dependence as cigarettes as the concentration of nicotine from these stripes is not very high and is decreased on weekly basis. The role of this stripes is to help the quitting smoker to reduce little by little the number of cigarettes without being affected by symptoms like lack of concentration, vomiting.

Maybe not very popular and certainly not strongly recommended by some specialist, acupuncture has much better results. Depending on number of smoked cigarettes, three or more sessions can be needed. The only inconvenient is that these results are documented only for short term. Records of long term results were not kept.

No matter the chosen method the medical world has proven that in 24 hours from ‘last cigarette’ the risk of heart attack will be considerably reduced, in one year it will be reduced at 50% and in two years it will be the same as for one person that does not smoke. So, ‘Please do all you can and find the best way to quit smoking’.

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