You might wonder, “Ugh! Is this yet another unhelpful, condemning article about how bad smoking is?”, nope, not at all, positive vibes only, so remove your finger from the little x that closes this tab and keep reading and move your finger from the x to the share button instead.
We all have our demons to deal with, and as it is World No Tobacco Day today, we wanted to focus on tobacco and brain health. However, this will not be one of the scary articles out there. We feel that focusing on positive things rather than the bad (just like in our Peak game ‘Happy River’) helps way more.
After all, our main objective is to make your brain as healthy and happy as possible, and we want to achieve this by being compassionate and giving it the room to not be perfect all the time.
When researching, we found some helpful advice we would like to share with you and the people you think could benefit from reading it.
1. Your Mood Will Improve, It Helps Relieve Stress And Relaxes You
You want to stop, but you continue because smoking feels like it relieves your stress and anxiety. It is a widespread belief that smoking helps you relax, but smoking actually increases anxiety and tension. In fact, the effects of smoking itself are likely to cause you anxiety in the first place.
When you have not smoked for a while, craving another cigarette might make you feel irritable and on edge.
These feelings can only be temporarily relieved when you light up a cigarette. So your brain will associate the improved mood with smoking, and then the whole cycle continues again.
After giving up smoking, you are likely to feel much calmer, more positive and have a better quality of life, especially if you struggle with your mental health.
Evidence suggests the beneficial effect of stopping smoking on symptoms of anxiety and depression can equal that of taking antidepressants.
2. Your Brain Starts to Reverse The Damage Caused By Smoking
Researchers from Montreal found that some of the damage to the brain’s cortex caused by smoking could be reversed if you stop smoking. It can be a long process, but ditching tobacco can create positive structural changes in the brain’s cortex. When you decide to stop smoking, the rewiring of your brain will begin, which also can break the addiction cycle.
Mayo Clinic discovered that after a month of quitting, the number of nicotine receptors in your brain should return to normal, and cravings will stop. Although stopping smoking can be challenging, it is well worth the effort. After 5 to 15 years, your stroke risk will be the same again as a nonsmoker.
Even quitting later in life can still significantly improve brain health and increase life expectancy.
Researchers in Oxford followed the habits of a group of British doctors across a fifty-year study. They found that quitting smoking as late as age 60 could increase life expectancy by as much as three years.
The benefits of this improve the younger you choose to quit, of course, with those stopping aged 30 gaining up to 10 years of life expectancy!
3. You Realise That There Is A Lot Of Support To Help You Along The Way (Just Not From Your Own Brain)
First things first, if you take any prescription medications or have any physical or mental health issues talk to your doctor before you plan to quit smoking, as they might be affected by cutting out cigarettes.
To be successful, you will have to deal with your brain not having nicotine and not having cigarettes during your daily routines.
Dealing with both at once can be challenging, so we need help with the first challenge: your pesky brain wanting nicotine. Widely used medication from your doctor can help as it will help subdue cravings and withdrawal symptoms in most cases.
This will enable you to focus more easily on the second challenge: finding out how to get through the day doing all the activities your brain associated with smoking.
Tricks to make things easier:
- Let the people you surround yourself with know about your change and ask them for their support.
- Get rid of all your smoking supplies (even that novelty lighter you bought in Amsterdam).
- Make sure to have enough medication if you decide to take some.
- Practise saying that you don’t smoke.
- Ask people not to smoke around you (yes, you finally can be that person).
- Avoid situations where you want to smoke until you are at a stable place in your journey.
- Buy oral substitutes like toothpicks, gum, or hard candy to help with cravings.
- Find a support group for quitting.
- Establish daily routines that don’t involve smoking and think about what triggers you to want to smoke. It might be challenging for you to continue your usual routines without a cigarette in your hand when you quit. You will need to find a healthier coping mechanism for challenging situations and the emotions you are feeling.
Once you jump into the cold waters of no cigarettes, you might notice an increase in symptoms that feel like mental health conditions. This results from nicotine withdrawal and is basically your brain having a huge tantrum because it wants a toy that you’ve given away. It could be that you have a hard time concentrating or sleeping, get anxious or upset, have strong urges to smoke, or you will feel generally uncomfortable.
Withdrawal can be very tricky to handle (we never said that dealing with demons is easy!), however, just a few weeks after quitting, this gets better, as your brain gets used to not having nicotine boosts.
It’s all about taking one step at a time, and if you feel that you aren’t as successful as you want to be, that’s ok — be proud of yourself for taking action. You gave it a go and you’ve learned some valuable things for next time. The more you use the support available around you, the better prepared you’ll be for stopping completely.
Last but not least, we found this TED Talk very helpful and good luck with the demons!
References:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/stopping-smoking-mental-health-benefits/
https://smokefree.gov/quit-smoking/why-you-should-quit/benefits-of-quitting
health/https://www.healthline.com/health/smoking/smoking-effects-on-brain
https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/how-quitting-smoking-affects-mental-health
