Am I ready to quit?

I recently had a client who wanted to quit smoking but was not ready as he had a very emotive issue in his life. He wanted to quit smoking cigarettes but his partner had just left him. I think that you would agree that in most cases this is very emotional.

Now he could have come to me to quit smoking with hypnosis but the likelihood of it being effective I believe would have been quite slim. In this case his thoughts are taken up by the emotions of his relationship breaking down.

What I am getting at is that to successfully […]

Be grateful for what you have

I was listening to a cd the other day when the speaker said, “be grateful for what you have and work with it”. After reflection I thought that it was a very true and profound statement.

How many of us ignore what we have, to live in the past and the future. In our rush to do this we ignore what we have and keep on yearning for the “good old days” or “if only I had this I could”. The reality is that we all have a set of tools that we can use to make our lives the way […]

I’m Afraid

I had a client the other day for quit smoking cigarettes that burst into tears when I asked him if he really wanted to quit smoking. He said that he did but he was afraid that he would fail. He had tried in the past and he had failed.

Many people who come to see me have failed to quit smoking and then succeeded. The point is that you do not need to be a victim of your history. So called failure is just feedback and you learn from feedback. If you look at your life you will see that you […]

I just can’t Quit!

I have had many people come to me for quit smoking and have said that they have given up drugs, some of them quite hard drugs, but they can’t seem to quit smoking.

I believe that this comes down to the fact that our brains are extremely primitive. As wonderful as the brain is there is still a lot of it that acts as if we are in the caveman times. If you are being chased by a great big sabre toothed tiger then your chances of survival are much better if you are in a group. Because of this there […]

The benefits of nicotine

Scientists have found in the last few years that nicotine may be an effective drug for relieving or preventing a variety of neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Tourette’s and schizophrenia. It might even improve attention and focus enough to qualify as a cognitive enhancer. These results have been found when nicotine has been delivered to the body as a patch or a gum and not by cigarettes or chewing tobacco. 

One of the biggest uses for nicotine has been for quitting smoking and in fact it has been found that nicotine for this is a dismal failure. […]

Does smoking cigarettes help with stress and anxiety?

Many people think that smoking helps when they are stressed or anxious. Is this true?

The answer is yes and no. Don’t know about you but that is not a very helpful answer. Let’s look at this in a bit more detail to understand it.

When you smoke a cigarette the nicotine in the cigarette causes the blood vessels to constrict. This interferes with the blood circulation and your blood pressure goes up. This in turn causes stress in your body so smoking adds additional stress to an already stressful situation. When you quit smoking cigarettes your circulation improves and your body […]

It’s hard to quit smoking!!!

Many of us set a goal to quit smoking for the New Year. At first we go along fine with us telling ourselves that” we are not going to smoke”. As time goes by it gets harder and harder to not smoke a cigarette and eventually that little voice that tells us to smoke wins and we cave in.

Why does this happen? There are several reasons and one of them is that our unconscious mind cannot take in negatives. When we say we “are not going to smoke” the unconscious mind translates it to we” are going to smoke”.

You will […]

Are e-cigarettes more toxic?

The following article appeared in our local paper and Reuters in Washington.

When heated to the max and inhaled deeply e-cigarettes produce the toxic chemical formaldehyde, which could make the devices up to 15 times more cancerous than regular cigarettes. US researchers have found.

While some say that e-cigarettes may help some tobacco smokers kick the habit, others are concerned that the unregulated devices are being marketed widely, despite little long term evidence about their health effects.

A team of researchers from Portland University found formaldehyde at levels far higher than seen in conventional cigarettes, boosting the risk of cancer.

The study, which critics […]

Santiago a surprising city

My first impression of Santiago in Chile was not a good one as all the buildings seemed to have come from the 1930-1940’s. I was beginning to think that I had been wrong to visit this city until we arrived at our accommodation in Bella Vista.

Bella Vista is an old part of town and near the university but boy does it have character. A lot of the building are painted with all sorts of scenes and the place is full of restaurants, bars, theatres and jazz clubs. It seems as if everyone in Chili is eating all the time.

I took […]

Cigarettes or e-cigarettes, that is the question?

I thought that this article from the Herald Bulletin was quite interesting and a little disturbing.

Each year millions of people resolve to quit smoking, and just as many teens are picking up a tobacco product for the first time.

Both groups are also looking at e-cigarettes as an alternative to traditional tobacco use, and a new study shows the use of e-cigarettes among teens has surpassed tobacco cigarettes in America.

According to DoSomething.org, nearly 4,000 adolescents under 18 experimented with tobacco on a daily basis and 1,000 of those will go on to become regular tobacco users.

The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the […]

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