Smoking and How to Quit Smoking Information by MedicineNet.com

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Smoking
and
How to Quit Smoking

Quit-Smoking Tips Slideshow

Medical Revising Author: Melissa Conrad Stoppler, MD
Medical Revising Editor: Jay W. Marks, MD

Quitting Smoking Ask The Experts

Acupuncture and Smoking Cessation

Medical Author: Dr. Standiford Helm II
Medical Editor Dr. Melissa Conrad Stöppler

Viewer Question: Can acupuncture help to stop smoking?

Doctor's Response: Smoking, which is better described as nicotine addiction, is a complex addiction, with both psychological and physical components. Stopping smoking is very difficult, as suggested by the old Mark Twain joke, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times."

There are also a thousand treatments available to help stop smoking. Whenever we have a multitude of treatments, it means we don't have any surefire way to treat a problem. Despite the absence of one "silver bullet" to treat nicotine addiction, you can stop smoking. The tools available to do so include both treating the physical addiction, such with as nicotine replacement and other medications, and treating the psychological component, as with support groups.

What problems are caused by smoking?

By smoking, you can cause health problems not only for yourself but also for those around you.

Hurting Yourself

Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco contains nicotine, a drug that is addictive. The nicotine, therefore, makes it very difficult (although not impossible) to quit. In fact, since the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 report on the dangers of smoking, millions of Americans have quit. Still, approximately 440,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year from smoking-related illnesses; this represents almost 1 out of every 5 deaths. The reason for these deaths is that smoking greatly increases the risk of getting lung cancer, heart attack, chronic lung disease, stroke, and many other cancers. Moreover, smoking is perhaps the most preventable cause of breathing (respiratory) diseases within the USA.

Hurting Others

Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family members, coworkers, and others who breathe the smoker's cigarette smoke, called secondhand smoke or passive smoke. Among infants up to 18 months of age, secondhand smoke is associated with as many as 300,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and pneumonia each year. In addition, secondhand smoke from a parent's cigarette increases a child's chances for middle ear problems, causes coughing and wheezing, worsens asthma, and increases an infant's risk of dying from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Smoking is also harmful to the unborn fetus. If a pregnant woman smokes, her fetus is at an increased risk of miscarriage, early delivery (prematurity), stillbirth, infant death, and low birth weight. In fact, it has been estimated that if all women quit smoking during pregnancy, about 4,000 new babies would not die each year.

Exposure to passive smoke can also cause cancer. Research has shown that non-smokers who reside with a smoker have a 24% increase in risk for developing lung cancer when compared with other non-smokers. An estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths occur each year in the U.S. that are attributable to passive smoking. Secondhand smoke also increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. If both parents smoke, a teenager is more than twice as likely to smoke as a teenager whose parents are both nonsmokers. Even in households where only one parent smokes, young people are more likely to start smoking.