10/07/2012

You can chew gum; you can wear a patch; you can suck on a lozenge, or swallow some pills or have acupuncture, hypnotherapy, or a laser treatment. You can even be incredibly brave and decide to go cold turkey. You, in other words, can approach the challenge of giving up you cigarettes in a variety of ways, and perhaps you already have.



If you are one of the millions of people desperate to stop smoking for whom nothing else has worked, you may be a candidate for the stop smoking injection, which uses two FDA-approved anticholinergic drugs, scopolamine and atarax, to block nicotine cravings.



How The Stop Smoking Injection Works



Your smoking habit has caused your brain to develop extra nerve endings--and the longer you have smoked, the more of them you have--which produce an excess of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine while you smoke and for a brief period after you quit.



If the nerves producing the acetylcholine are blocked, they will not be able to signal your brain and body that nicotine withdrawal has begun. The concept is similar to having an anesthetic before you get stitches; pain messages are from the nerve endings in your skin to you brain simply do not get through.



The stop smoking injection will reduce, or completely eliminate, physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal during the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after you quit, when they are at their most severe. By taking a stop smoking injection, you can spare yourself any or all of gastrointestinal disturbances, nausea, headache, lowered heart rate and blood pressure, increased irritability, fatigue, nervousness, and an inability to concentrate.



Because it will take you body three to four days to completely rid itself of all traces of nicotine, and up to fourteen days for the acetylcholine concentration in your brain to return to normal levels, the stop smoking injection must be supplemented with oral medication and a scopolamine patch, similar to the nicotine patches used to help people quit smoking.



The medication and patch will be of lower strength than the stop smoking injection, but are adequate to block the acetylcholine-producing nerves while your body adjusts to nicotine withdrawal.



Shortcomings Of The Stop Smoking Injection



Critics of the stop smoking injection say that, in spite of its high success rate in helping people get through the physical aspects of nicotine withdrawal, does nothing to help a smoker understand the psychological reasons for his or her addiction several clinics offering the stop smoking injection also have follow-up interactive programs in behavior modification.



One study has shown the stop smoking injection, without behavioral modification therapy, has an initial success rate approaching 90%, with 40% of those who used it still nicotine-free after one year. The stop smoking injection, because it uses FDA-approved medicines, may be covered as a medical treatment by your health insurance provider.
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