6 Natural Ways To Quit Smoking

6 Natural Ways To Quit Smoking

Feel the urge to reach for a cigarette?

Hop on the treadmill.

A new review of studies shows that exercise really does help smokers trying to quit by decreasing the urge for nicotine, Reuters first reported.

"Certainly, exercise seems to have temporary benefits, and as such can be strongly recommended," study researcher Adrian A. Taylor, professor of exercise and health psychology at the University of Exeter, told Reuters.

The review of studies, published in the journal Addiction, showed on a whole that doing some sort of physical activity -- whether running, or taking a bike ride -- was linked with decreased cravings for nicotine, compared with doing something less active.

"Despite a high degree of between-study heterogeneity, effects sizes of all primary studies were in the same direction, with PA [physical activity] showing a greater reduction in cravings compared with controls," the researchers wrote in the study.

PsychCentral reported that the study participants did not use any other kinds of smoking cessation programs or products, so it's possible that these may work better than exercise to quell urges. But, at the least, the study suggests exercise could be a useful tool to help kick the habit.

This isn't the first time fitness has been pinpointed as an aid for smoking cessation. University of Exeter researchers previously found that exercise changes activity in the brains of smokers, which corresponded to a lowered craving for nicotine. That study was published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

For more natural ways to help you kick the butt -- and thereby lower your risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke and a myriad of other deadly health problems -- click through the slideshow:

• Mindfulness

  Mindfulness training helped participants in a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21723049" target="_hplink">2011 <em>Drug and Alcohol Dependence</em> study</a> to stay off cigarettes. That study included 88 people who smoked 20 cigarettes daily, on average, who were split up into two groups: One received four weeks of mindfulness training, while the other group went through four weeks of an <a href="http://www.ffsonline.org/" target="_hplink">American Lung Association stop-smoking program</a>. The researchers found that more of those who went through the mindfulness training smoked fewer cigarettes -- and stayed off them -- than those who went through the other stop-smoking program. The mindfulness training included <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minding-the-body/201204/can-mindfulness-help-you-quit-smoking" target="_hplink">realizing when you're facing a craving</a>, accepting it, thinking about what's happening and then taking note of the sensation (whether it's tightness or pressure), <em>Psychology Today</em> reported.

• Weight Lifting

  Jogging and bicycling aren't the only exercises that could help you kick the smoking habit -- <em>Shape</em> magazine reported that <a href="http://www.shape.com/latest-news-trends/study-says-weight-lifting-can-help-smokers-quit-and-lose-weight" target="_hplink">weightlifting could help</a>, too. The research, published in the journal <em>Nicotine & Tobacco Research</em>, showed that doing two hour-long weightlifting sessions for 12 weeks <em>plus</em> undergoing treatment to quit smoking was linked with greater success in quitting smoking, compared with just undergoing the stop-smoking treatment.

• Eat Produce

  <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/10/fruits-vegetables-quit-smoking-smokers-tobacco_n_1581465.html" target="_hplink">Eating lots of fruits and veggies</a> could help smokers maintain a tobacco-free lifestyle, according to research from the University of Buffalo. The study, published in the journal <em>Nicotine and Tobacco Research</em>, included 1,000 smokers ages 25 and older. The researchers had the participants answer surveys about their smoking habits and their fruit and vegetable intake. Then, they followed up with them 14 months later and asked them if they used tobacco over the past month. The researchers found that there was a relationship between the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/10/fruits-vegetables-quit-smoking-smokers-tobacco_n_1581465.html" target="_hplink">amount of fruits and vegetables</a> the study participants ate, and the likelihood that they quit -- and stayed off -- tobacco. In fact, people who ate the most produce in the study were three times more likely to report that they'd been tobacco free in the previous month. The researchers also found a link between increased produce consumption and taking longer in the day to have the first cigarette, smoking fewer cigarettes, and decreased dependence on nicotine (based on test results).

• Acupuncture And Hypnosis

  A review of studies suggests there is evidence that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/07/acupuncture-quit-smoking-hypnosis_n_1497348.html" target="_hplink">acupuncture and hypnosis</a> can work to help quit smoking, Reuters reported. Researchers, who published their findings in the <em>American Journal of Medicine</em>, said that other options -- like medications and counseling -- should be tried first, but that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/11/hypnosis-quit-smoking_n_1248444.html" target="_hplink">hypnosis</a> and acupuncture could help if those options don't work, or if people don't want to go on medications, according to Reuters.

• Text Messages

  Who knew your phone could be used to help you quit smoking? A recent study published in the <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60701-0/abstract" target="_hplink">journal <em>The Lancet</em></a> showed that smokers who enrolled in a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/smoking-text-message_n_888188.html" target="_hplink">program called "txt2stop"</a> -- where they received encouraging text messages to quit smoking -- were twice as likely to kick the habit after six months, compared with smokers who didn't get any encouraging messages. In the study, conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, one group was able to text words like "lapse" and "crave" to a phone number, and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20075843-247/want-to-quit-smoking-try-text-message-support/" target="_hplink">received an encouraging text</a> message in return, CNET reported. The other group of people, however, only got one text message every two weeks, and that message just thanked them for being part of the study.

• Quitting Smoking And Health

  Eletta Hansen explains some facts about smoking, and discusses if your body gets healthier after you quit smoking

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Joseph Blady, M.D.: A Real Health Care Debate

Joseph Blady, M.D.: A Real Health Care Debate

The health care debate has become surreal. Politicians talk about fixes that bear no relation to real world experience. This is not surprising when one considers that the medical profession has no essential role in the discussion.

I practiced community hospital anesthesia for 20 years before leaving the profession in 2000, but keep close contact with many of my colleagues. At the time I retired, Medicare paid me less per patient than it did when I started in 1980. During those 20 years, I NEVER submitted a bill to Medicaid because the compensation was so low that it wasn't worth the trouble to do the paperwork. Apparently, things have only gotten worse for providers, according to my friends.

Did you ever wonder why you have all those itemized costs on your doctor and hospital bills? It seems that you get charged for the doctor walking into the examining room, walking out, taking your blood pressure, hitting your knee with his little hammer, etc. Many activities are covered by different billing codes, and the compensation for each of those codes is so low that the only way to make seeing Medicare patients profitable is to bill for all those separate codes.

In my last year of practice, I was on call on Easter Sunday. An elderly woman was brought to the operating suite that afternoon with a broken hip. Because of her many health problems, she needed to be cleared for surgery by her regular internist. He was off, and we got his covering doctor. His response, "I'm not leaving Easter dinner with my family for $35. Do her tomorrow." That was in 2000!

Medicine in this country, while still the best in the world (don't believe the doctored statistics), isn't what it was, because you're going to get what you pay for. The discussion always comes down to the same issue of how to avoid gutting health care while relieving the crushing cost burden of a service that is both tech- and personnel-intensive. It is already more difficult to get doctors to take Medicare and Medicaid patients than it used to be. The response is sometimes the establishment of "mills" that crank through patients at breakneck speed, and with the expected results. The solution is not to reduce further provider compensation.
What to do? The solution needs to be radical and multifaceted. Tort reform should be a part of the equation, regardless of the path pursued. But since we've decided as a nation that medicine is a business, simple business principles might be in order.

Some time back, big retailers realized that they were paying distributors an extra cut to get product from manufacturers to their stores. Some smart guy realized that he could deal directly with the manufacturer and cut out the middleman. The distributor rapidly disappeared from the scene with no apparent harm to the retail landscape.

How are the insurance companies any different? In 2011 they reaped record profits providing what? They don't practice medicine, and will, in fact, find any way possible to keep you from getting access while thinking of any gimmick possible to hold off paying your bills as they gain interest payments on that held money. The fact that both parties embrace ideas that include these companies in managing Medicare is unfathomable.

Think of diverting all those billions in profits toward simply lowering health care costs. The replacement: consortia of doctors and regional hospitals that sell insurance directly to patients. They could be competitive, forcing down costs. The policies would have riders to care for people hurt or ill while traveling. Federal and state governments could take an oversight role to prevent gouging and needless duplication of services, rather than trying to figure out fee schedules that don't work. Medicare could be folded in by providing a voucher that pays the entire premium in the system the person chooses. Medicaid could be handled similarly. The system would be tweaked at intervals as results were observed. And the overall system would be non-profit. Pharmaceuticals could be included, as well. All this is actually being done in some areas of the country.

It still won't be cheap. onservative economist Eliot Janeway once pointed out that maybe medicine has to be as expensive as it is or you can't have the medical care you want. How much care we want is another discussion. But however much that is, it will be more if we don't shovel billions of our health care dollars into insurance company coffers and receive absolutely no value added to our health care in return.

The problem, as always, is the politics. What will counteract the lobbying dollars the insurance companies use to paper the offices of representatives of both parties, or the patently inane arguments made by both parties in the heat of election season? The solution presented here may not be THE solution, but the point is that we need to start thinking about truly innovative approaches to our health care dilemma, or we'll simply continue to get less care for ever growing costs.

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Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Ed and Deb Shapiro: More Benefits Of Meditation: Boost Your Self Esteem

Ed and Deb Shapiro: More Benefits Of Meditation: Boost Your Self Esteem

We may all have had times we've been put down, undermined, when our belief in ourselves is shaken, questioned or threatened, or when we feel we're simply not good enough. Such self-doubt can lead to hopelessness, inferiority, even depression. A lack of self-esteem is demeaning and just not an easy feeling.

The Dalai Lama met with a group of Western psychotherapists, and he asked them what was the most common issue that their patients came to see them about. They were unified in their response: a lack of self-esteem. Apparently the Dalai Lama found this quite hard to believe, as self-esteem is not a known problem in Tibet. We talked to one of his translators, now living with his wife and child in London. Tashi told us that children growing up in Tibet would be welcomed and loved by the whole village, which he found very different to the way children are raised in our more nuclear-oriented family culture.

We watched as an eager young television reporter from CNN asked the Dalai Lama what was the first thing he thought of when he awoke in the morning. We thought that the world's most famous meditator would say something deeply profound or insightful, something along the lines of vowing to save the world from its own ignorance. Instead, the Dalai Lama simply replied, "Shaping motivation." He said that we all, including himself, have to be vigilant so that our intentions are focused in the right direction, and how shaping his motivation on a daily basis reminds him to extend loving kindness and compassion to all others. Such motivation takes us beyond ourselves so that we are not limited by a lack of confidence or self-esteem.

There are two very specific ways that meditation can help us to transform a lack of self-esteem into inner confidence, self-acceptance and self-belief.

Firstly, it enables us to meet, greet, and make friends with ourselves. We get to know who we are and to accept and embrace ourselves just as we are. We soon find that our doubts, insecurities or fears are really only superficial as we begin to connect with a deeper place of trust, dignity and self-worth.

Secondly, as we bring acceptance and loving kindness to all aspects of ourselves, we may surprisingly uncover a deeper belief that we do not deserve to be happy, that we do not believe we are good enough -- a sort of unconscious built-in self-destruction clause. But we can invite kindness into that self-negation and lack of self-esteem until such uncertainty dissolves into love.

Meditation awakens us to the interconnection between every one of us, that we are not alone here. Rather, we are each a part of this wondrous planet together, and the more we extend ourselves with kindness the less we will be focused on our own limitations. Discovering our inter-connection takes us from a place of self-centeredness to other-centeredness. The Dalai Lama says kindness is his religion. You can read more in our book, Be The Change, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World.

Loving Self Meditation

Find a comfortable and upright place to sit. Take a few deep breaths and watch the flow of your breath as it enters and leaves.

Bring your focus to your heart, and as you breathe in feel as if your heart is opening and softening; as you breathe out, release any tension or resistance.

Now bring into your heart either an image of yourself or repeat your name and hold yourself in your heart, tenderly and gently. Silently repeat, "May I be freed from self-doubt, may I be happy, may all things go well for me."

Keep breathing into your heart, holding yourself with love, and repeating the words. This will generate a deep loving kindness and appreciation for yourself.

When you are ready, take a deep breath and let it go. Then go about your day with a caring heart and a smile on your lips.

Does your self-esteem need a boost? Do comment below. You can receive notice of our blogs every Thursday by checking Become a Fan at the top.

Your Body Speaks Your Mind A four-week webinar (online course) with Ed and Deb Shapiro, to learn how repressed, denied, or ignored thoughts and feelings are linked to specific body parts and illness. Starts Sept. 12, but you can join in and download classes anytime

Meditation: The Best Friend You Will Ever Have A four-week webinar (online course) with Ed and Deb Shapiro on discovering the greatest friend you could have: meditation. You can join in and download classes anytime. A free introduction on Sept. 20 and a four-week webinar starting Sept. 27.

See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Byron Katie and many others.

Deb is the author of the award-winning YOUR BODY SPEAKS YOUR MIND, Decoding the Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Messages That Underlie Illness.

Our three meditation CDs: Metta -- Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi -- Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra -- Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com.

For more by Ed and Deb Shapiro, click here.

For more on meditation, click here.

Follow Ed and Deb Shapiro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/edanddebshapiro

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com