That’s not a very good summation of the study. What the study found was that these things may help people quit smoking, but they don’t stop people from *starting *smoking again years later.
And really, why would they? Seems a weird definition of “work”. Does a diet not work if, four years after losing weight on it, you start stuffing your face again and put weight back on?
I like that idea of throwing ice into the shower elbows. Going to keep it in mind…
Do something exhilarating that takes you “out of” yourself for awhile. Ride go-carts till you drop. If you’re around snow, sled down a steep hill. Go to a 3-D action movie. When you’re done you might be drained enough not to feel so agitated. Good going with the quitting!
Actually IMHO dieting should be held to the same standard, as it is actually worse to Pogo around with your weight.
Like weight loss the health benefits of quitting smoking only exist if you quit for the long term.
The issue is that NRT is a harm reduction strategy more than it is a quitting strategy.
A person who goes off the patch or the gum is still chemically addicted, they are far more likely to smoke than those who quit cold turkey with a similar length “quit”
This is most likely why most people (80%+) who have successful long term quits did so “cold turkey”.
To the OP, you can make it though, remember there are more ex-smokers than smokers now and it gets a LOT easier over the next few months.
While this is conventional wisdom, we’re now seeing some studieswhich suggest that so called “yo-yo dieting” is actually better healthwise than being steadily obese. Time (and more studies) will tell.
But that’s besides the point. The point is that a diet plan which helps you lose weight “works.” You may regain the weight when you stop following the diet, but that’s hardly the diet plan’s fault.
Really? Why? Why isn’t 4 years of not taking carcinogens and cardiovascular poisons into your body a good thing? Since the damage from smoking is cummulative, and we see greater health risks with greater pack years, this is a pretty extraordinary claim.
Again, really? The linked article doesn’t say that patches and gum are inferior, just that they are not superior, to other quitting methods:
Do you have a cite for this?
From your first cite:
“In fact, important improvements that likely signify decreased risk for cardiovascular disease occur even despite weight regain, as long as dieting persists,”
“Switching to a healthy lifestyle is a long-term strategy that should be done moderately but persistently,”
So you need to keep dieting, they are talking about the weight gain if you maintain the diet, not the quit-starve-quit way that many people diet.
The long term maintenance of the heather lifestyle is what they claim helps
the second study, while interesting:
“The yo-yo dieters also lived about as long as a control group of mice steadily fed a low-fat diet.”
Diet without life change does do little to help you, as the other life changes you need to make. e.g. increasing cardio health levels, which are impeded by obesity are the main factors in improving health
Which form of mortality are you talking about?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16137834?dopt=Citation
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/10/1260.abstract
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/12/3/310.full.pdf+html
In survey after survey after survey, long term quitters typically quit cold turkey.
Of course counseling is a HUGE help, that is part of the reason NRT was so effective as a prescribed remedy.
Unless…you are talking about a clinical trial where the “cold turkey” control was someone who was given placebo and was not quitting cold turkey by choice.
NRT is not a zero sum gain, but as I said it is harm reduction, analogous to methadone as a replacement for harder opiates.
http://whyquit.com/NRT/studies/Hartman_NCI_NRT.pdf
Here is another document that shows that past 6 months non-NRT quitters are more successful after 6 months.