Want To Quit Smoking? Go Cold Turkey
A study finds that gradually reducing the amount participants smoked gave them cravings and withdrawal symptoms before they even reached the quit day. Cutting off smoking completely showed greater results in success.
NPR:
To Quit Smoking, It's Best To Go Cold Turkey
Nicola Lindson-Hawley remembers how hard it was for her mom to stop smoking. "One of the reasons I find this topic very interesting and why I went into it was because my mom was a smoker when I was younger," says Lindson-Hawley, who studies tobacco and health at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She remembers helping her mom keep track of the number of days she'd stayed away from cigarettes by putting stickers in a journal. By studying about 700 adult smokers, she found out that her mom quit the right way — by going cold turkey. The results are out in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. (Bichell, 3/15)
Reuters:
Quitting Smoking Abruptly Has Best Long-Term Results
People who quit smoking all at once are more likely to be successful than those who cut down on cigarettes gradually, according to a new study. “For many people, the obvious way to quit smoking is to cut down gradually until they stop,” said lead author Nicola Lindson-Hawley, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford in the U.K. (Doyle, 3/15)
