Step 1. Becoming a smoker
I believe that our perception about smoking was cemented a long
time before we actually picked up our first cigarette, When I think
about what I saw on T.V and films and personally by atching the
adults around me i realize that it was destined I would be a smoker.
Not through peer pressure but through curiosity. I remember the
images of cool heroes on the screen getting all
the women and fast cars but i remember more the adults around me
such as my mum and uncles saying " I better not catch you smoking,
They will kill you " and then turning around and lighting one
up. What message did that send to a child. It will kill you but
it must be so great they are all willing to risk their lives for
it.
Step 2. Smoking that cigarette
Like I say it was inevatble I would at some point try a cigarette.
I now realize that what happened after that first cigarette shaped
my life. I remember smoking the first ones. Made me feel sick and
dizzy, made me scared I had poisioned myself and would die, made
me feel exilerated and grown up yet stupid and childish. All these
things went through my head but that was not the problem. By smoking
that first cigarette I had started off a chain reaction that would
affect my life. By introducing poision to my system I had triggered
a primitive reaction inside my body that Should not have been trigered.
Hormones and chemicals were causing around my system trying to deal
with the onslaught. The most basic survival response, the fight
or
flight response had been activated. This was normally reserved for
the most dangerous times in a humans life. Yet here it was all bells
and whistles blowing trying to keep me out of danger. But what danger.
There was no threat. The whole sequence had been triggered by mistake.
By the chemical reaction to a cigarette.
Step 3. Safety first
There are certain reactions by humans that are there and cannot
be ignored no matter how irrational they may seem. By triggering
the fight or flight response I was now in a state of full alert,
all systems go ready to fight or run away. However the only way
to turn off this reaction would be to see the danger disapear or
actually expend the pent up energy generated by the
false alarm. Unfortunantly We did neither. At this point a hormone
called cortisol was being pumped into our system to cope with increased
threat. Cortisol in short bursts is very usefull for the human body
to make sure you are ready to protect yourself. However too much
and over a prolonged period can have devastating effects on a human.
Step 4. The second cigarette
Instead of accepting how bad smoking was and how it just made us
feel anxious and afraid we decided to believe the perception we
had that smoking must be good and I must have done it wrong. By
lighting a second cigarette we were actually starting a misunderstanding
that changed our lives. Nicotine has been proven to stimulate a
hormone called DHEA. DHEA is the opposite hormone to cortisol. They
work as a team to switch on and off the fight or flight response.
So by lighting the second cigarette we were basically telling ourselves.
Everything is now OK and I am safe again. To your mind all you had
done to stop the anxiety was light a cigarette. At no
point did it associate the two things though. The smoking of the
first cigarette and the lighting of the second. So instead of seeing
smoking as it really was. horrible and causing anxiety, it was now
seen as an answer to anxiety.. A distorted memory began.
Step 5. What then
To your subconscious mind you had just discovered a way of controling
your anxiety. not only that, it was instant gratification. you didn't
have to wait. The problem was though that as the effects of the
nicotine and the resulting DHEA started to diminish, the cortisol
that was still being pumped into your system had started to take
effect again. The symptoms of anxiety
and fear started to surface again. Again all due to the last cigarette
you smoked. The same cigarette that you had hailed as the cure for
anxiety. But as it was about an hour after smoking it you never
related the two events. So what now. Your subconscious now had an
answer for this feeling. Smoke a cigarette. So that's what you do
and slowly you started to rely on the
relief felt by smoking. the relief from that last cigarette. Perverse
really.
Step 6. How did it keep you smoking
I spent a long time studying this. But I have come to a conclusion
that is only my theory but seems to fit. There is something else
that can trigger the fight or flight response described in step
3. That is inflammation. When the body detects any kind of inflammation
it releases cortisol into the system to fight off the bacteria.
The reason for this is the body is seeing the inflammation as an
injury due to you fighting off the danger. It cannot help but do
it. Now when you think about it, smoking a cigarette meant inhaling
hot smoke that incorporated all kinds of additives and chemicals
and even radioactive particles. All this caused inflammation to
the
intestinal and respitory tracts. You didn't feel it straiht away
though because the nicotine had released the DHEA (the all clear
hormone) which meant that until the levels of cortisol passed the
levels of DHEA then it would not be felt. But as soon as the DHEA
dropped enough the fight or flight response would activate. Vicious
circle.
Step 7. Trying to quit
So when you think about it you are not fighting just an addiction
to nicotine, nicotine is a small cog in a much bigger wheel. You
are actually fighting something more powerful than any drug or chemical.
You are fighting yourself. You are trying to override your own primative
reactions. This is why people struggle, not because they do not
want to quit but because they are still under the perception that
smoking is doing something possitive for them. and that if they
just will themselves hard enough it will work. However there is
not just a physcological attachment to smoking, There is a physical
link. Inflammation can also trigger the same fight or flight
repsonse as stress. This means that everytime you smoke you are
aggitating the lining of your intestines, lungs and gut. Everytime
you breathe in hot smoke you are giving yourself a reaction that
will cause inflammation to flare and the stress response to be triggered.
Think of the balance of the seasons. What fuels the regenerative
cycle? The power of the sun. Without the heat of the sun, we would
have eternal winter - nothing could grow or live. Now imagine the
opposite: a world on fire where the heat scorches everything in
its path. In the same way, our survival relies on just enough inflammation
- but not too much - to fuel the
natural regeneration of cells and ward off infection and disease.
There is danger in having too much of a good thing: while a healthy
immune response includes sporadic bouts of acute inflammation, it's
not okay to stay perpetually inflamed. When you get to the point
where the built-in checks and balances of your immune system can't
contain your inner fire,
inflammation is considered chronic and systemic. And we're seeing
it in more and more patients. Chronic inflammation acts like a ghost
in an otherwise beautiful machine. It
upsets the delicate balance among all of our major systems: endocrine,
central-nervous, digestive, and cardiovascular/respiratory, creating
health issues with one or several or all. In a healthy body, these
systems communicate with and respond to one another. With chronic
inflammation, that cross-talk no longer works.
Step 8. Willpower, how much do you need
The answer to this may surprise you. The answer is actually none.
Think about what willpower actually is. The power of your will to
do or not to do something. So When it comes to quitting smoking
your conscious mind that makes all the rational decisions wants
to quit, however the subconscious mind that has recorded all these
distorted memeories about smoking will not
let you. It will not let you becuase by just saying you are quitting
it is seeing that as you putting yourself in danger. You are telling
it that you are just going to take away it's safety net against
fear and anxiety without explaining why or what you are going to
do to replace it. How can you do this ? There are various ways.
If you are still smoking, look at the next cigarette you smoke.
Do not do it as an automatic reaction to certain feelings, actually
ask yourself why you are smoking this cigarette, Is it really doing
what you believe it does. What will happen in an hours time. Will
you feel like another? why? Link the two things together like they
should. The smoking of the last cigarette is dirctly related to
how you feel when you want another. Take a cigarette and rip it
open.
Empty the contents on a peice of paper. Look at the contents, get
a pencil and sift through the inanimate object lying in front of
you. Is it really that magical, can those dry leaves actaully releive
your anxiety, releave boredom, make a meal taste better, can it
sing to sooth you can it jump up and entertain you. NO yet for some
reason you have associated all these things to a cigarette. Once
you have shown your subconscious mind that you have been tricked
you
will gain the permission of your subconscious to quit. Without fight
and struggle because for the first time your conscious and subconscious
minds will agree. If they agree there is no need for willpower.
Step 9. What happens when I quit
Over the first few days the chemicals that have built up in your
body over many years of smoking will start to break down and disperse.
This is what most people call the withdrawals. I prefer to call
them the symptoms of recovery. Many people ask, why after weeks
and months do they still feel the cravings for cigarettes. Well
perhaps it isn't craving for cigarettes. As
mentioned above the other trigger for the fight or flight response
is inflammation. The damage caused by smoking does not heal in a
week. In fact there is no time you can put on it as everyone heals
at different rates. As you get a flare up of inflammation you will
get the cortisol released into your system which in turn will make
you feel anxious. It may be something
you ate or drank, it maybe due to genuine anxiety or stress but
either way it will cause the flare-up to react. So while all the
time you have blamed nicotine it could be because you just were
eating something that didn't agree with you.
Step 10. The implication of too much cortisol
Cortisol in small doses is good and is needed for humans to work
at their optimum level however constant over porduction as caused
by smoking and inflammation leads to damaging health concequences.
Insomnia: When you quit
Cortisol has its own circadian (daily) rhythm, and
should be at its highest level in the morning when we are waking
up and getting started with our day; by night time it should be
very low. One of cortisol's functions is to keep us very alert in
times of danger, so high levels of cortisol at
night will cause insomnia.
There are two types of insomnia. In the first, you
have trouble falling asleep because the cortisol levels are already
too high; in the second, you fall asleep but then wake up in the
middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. This second type
occurs because either the elevated level of cortisol has lowered
your blood sugar too much (see Diabetes), or it's time
for your body to repair connective tissue and it realizes that the
intestinal tract is inflamed and it produces cortisol in response
to the inflammation.
Weight Gain: When you quit
This goes hand and hand with the blood sugar problem
of cortisol and diabetes, because the brain's primary fuel is glucose
or sugar. If you are not able to metabolize sugar properly, your
brain will demand that you eat more foods that have sugar in them
to feed itself. So now you are eating high-calorie carbohydrate
foods that often are high in fat, and you will gain weight. Equally
bad is the fact that these types of food cause systemic inflammation
and the further production of cortisol.
Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Adrenal Exhaustion:
Cortisol imbalances due to inflammation can cause fatigue in several
ways. Because cortisol is designed to keep you alert in times of
stress, it can cause insomnia, and the lack of quality sleep will
make you tired. Cortisol also suppresses insulin production to keep
the sugar available for muscles in a stress response, and can result
in low blood sugar, which will also
make you fatigued. Lastly, your adrenal glands can ultimately become
exhausted from the constant demands placed on them to produce endless
amounts of cortisol, usually as a response to chronic inflammation
from a poor diet and smoking.
By Ian Clark
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