Smoking Cessation (2024)

FAQs

Smoking Cessation? ›

Short-acting nicotine replacement therapies — such as nicotine gum, lozenges, nasal sprays or inhalers — can help you overcome intense cravings. These short-acting therapies are usually safe to use along with long-acting nicotine patches or one of the non-nicotine stop-smoking drugs.

Join Freedom From Smoking

Freedom From Smoking® is one of the most effective cessation programs in the country, available in a variety of options to help you quit for good.

To quit smoking. Smoking cessation lowers the risk of cancer and other serious health problems.

Successful intervention begins with identifying users and appropriate interventions based upon the patient's willingness to quit. The five major steps to intervention are the "5 A's": Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, and Arrange.

"The best way to quit smoking is with a combination of medication and counseling," says Maher Karam-Hage, M.D., medical director of the Tobacco Treatment Program at MD Anderson. "They both help. But you double your chances by using both compared with one of them."

If you don't have health insurance: Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW to ask about free or reduced-cost quit medicines. Quit coaches can help connect you with quit-smoking medicines through community programs. Some states have special programs for people who smoke and don't have health insurance.

Use the 4Ds to tide over cravings: distract, delay, deep breathing, and drinking water.

The clinician can motivate patients to consider a quit attempt with the "5 R's": Relevance, Risks, Rewards, Roadblocks, and Repetition.

You Need a Plan

Only 4 to 7 percent of smokers that try to quit "cold turkey" are successful in staying smokefree. The rest of us need a plan.

What are the 4 stages to quit-smoking? ›

These quit-smoking medicines include nicotine replacement medicines (the nicotine patch, lozenge, gum, oral inhaler, and nasal spray) and pill medicines (varenicline and bupropion SR). Some other strategies, with or without medicines, can help you quit as well.

Patches release nicotine slowly. Some are worn all the time and some should be taken off at night. Inhalators, gum and sprays act more quickly and may be better for helping with cravings. There's no evidence that any single type of NRT is more effective than another.

Walking, swimming, running, dancing, cycling, and boxing are a few types of aerobic exercise. Withdrawal symptoms and cravings for cigarettes decrease during exercise and up to 50 minutes after exercising. Exercise decreases appetite and helps limit the weight gain some people have when they quit smoking.

People who smoke who have seen Tips ads report greater intentions to quit within the next 30 days, and people who smoke who have seen the ads multiple times have even greater intentions to quit. Higher levels of exposure to the Tips campaign were associated with lower odds of relapse to cigarette smoking.

In our study, 45.3% of the patients who applied to our outpatient clinic stopped smoking after one year. The rate of the patients who quit smoking during the first year of treatment was 61.9% while 26.8% started smoking again.