Find out more about whether nicotine patches work in my blog articles below.
Gentle reader, let me ask you a hypothetical question. If you were in the unhappy position of being a smoker (i.e., nicotine addict), and you wanted to escape this predicament, [...]
It’s an unfortunate fact that many smokers, although they dislike smoking and wish they didn’t have to do it, find the prospect of quitting very difficult. Therefore it’s understandable that [...]
A fool and his money are soon parted—old English proverb. Modern version: There’s one born every minute. Whether it’s a seemingly miraculous cure for hair loss, type 2 diabetes, erectile [...]
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced it has awakened to the interesting idea that the way to help people quit smoking is for them to have a [...]
The 2017 version of Stoptober, as they call it, finished on 28th October. The idea was that if smokers could be encouraged and supported not to smoke for twenty-eight days, [...]
Since I'm on their mailing list, I've once again started receiving notices of the forthcoming 2017 version of the so-called Stoptober anti-smoking effort put out by Public Health England (part [...]
When I used to work in obstetrics (care of pregnant women) certain routine tests were carried out at each attendance, such as checking the urine and measuring the blood pressure. [...]
Gentle reader, bear with me until l come to the bit where I disclose the amazing revelation that recently came upon me. Now, the following is from the website of [...]
1. Fear Horrible pictures on cigarette packs and emphasizing that smoking causes cancer and heart disease assume people smoke because of ignorance of the consequences. This is not so. Everyone [...]
‘Smokefree’ is a catchy neologism used by the NHS Smokefree campaign. It’s supported by Public Health England which is part of the UK government’s Department of Health. So it’s quite [...]
Gentle reader, forgive my cynicism, but here we have another example of what might be called ‘The Hard Way to Quit Smoking’, this time from the website of New York [...]
As an example of everything that’s wrong with the orthodox approach to smoking cessation we need look no further than an online feature from Helpguide.org called How to Quit Smoking [...]
‘Action on Smoking and Health’ (ASH) is a charity set up by the Royal College of Physicians of the UK. It’s supported by those worthy bodies, the British Heart Foundation [...]
The distinguished medical journal, The Lancet, in June 2016 reported the results of a huge multinational collaborative effort to investigate the risks of psychiatric side-effects of two drugs used in [...]
NRT, let me remind you, means so-called nicotine replacement therapy. Why ‘so-called’? Because nicotine is not a replacement for anything, nor is nicotine being replaced with something, so the name [...]
Last year in a little town in New York state I had occasion to visit a friendly neighbourhood pharmacy. There I chanced upon a pamphlet with the inviting title, Let’s [...]
If a doctor were to call himself a tobacco treatment specialist what would you think he does? It’s ambiguous. Is he treating a disease called tobacco, similarly to the way [...]
Curing someone of smoking is easy, in my experience. However, treating alcoholism is a different matter. It’s not difficult to cure alcoholism – it’s impossible. Let me hasten to add [...]
What does the US National Cancer Institute have to say about stopping smoking? On their website there’s a long section titled ‘How To Handle Withdrawal Symptoms and Triggers When You [...]
If you're a smoker trying, that is, failing, to stop, what help is out there? The orthodox approach, promulgated by the medical profession, is called, curiously, nicotine replacement therapy. Does [...]