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Smoking is a dangerous and addictive habit that affects the lives of millions of people around the world. Today, we are aware of the dangers of smoking, and smokers are urged to stop smoking for the benefit of their own health. This is not an easy feat, as most smokers start at an young age. The average age at which many people begin to smoke is only thirteen years old.

A habit formed at that age is not easily broken. Nicotine affects the body in many ways and it is hard to pull free without some help. There are many diseases associated with smoking. Most smokers require some help on how to quit smoking and a variety of different methods exist for this very purpose.

There are many factors that contribute to why people start smoking and continue to smoke. The main reason that people begin to smoke is peer pressure. Some young people believe smoking will make them appear more mature, and increase their popularity with their peers. It also is forbidden which makes it all the more alluring to teenagers, hence the low starting age for many people. This young age makes ceasing smoking more challenging in your later years.

Media can also have an impact on the decision to start smoking. Smoking portrayed in movies or on television can lead someone to believe that smoking is a safe activity. Parents can wield the biggest influence over their children by setting a good example and not smoking, or quitting smoking. Mothers and fathers who smoke are far more likely to have children who start to smoke.

Smokers begin to crave nicotine, a drug within tobacco. Nicotine can affect your mind and body in many harmful ways. Nicotine, once inhaled into the lungs reaches the brain in a mere eight seconds. Once there, nicotine affects your blood pressure and heart rate. Over time it can increase your bad cholesterol and narrow your arteries. Nicotine in concentrated doses is a lethal poison, so imagine the damage it inflicts on your body. Nicotine is also addictive and one of the reasons many smokers cannot quit smoking.

Smoking can affect your health on many different levels. Getting winded playing a game is one side effect of smoking. More serious smoking related diseases include emphysema and cancer. Strokes and heart disease are also closely associated with cigarette smoking. A person who stops smoking will dramatically reduce their risk of developing these diseases for every year they go without smoking.

The outcome of these medical conditions caused by smoking is grim. Lung cancer is almost always fatal unless detected very early and a full 80% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Lung and heart disease can subtract years from your life unless you are able to quit smoking. Emphysema cannot be cured but only managed, plus the damage to your lungs cannot be repaired. Stop smoking benefits include a healthier, longer life and a better quality of life.

There are many different ways to quit smoking, and you must select the right method for you as an individual. Nicotine gums and patches are made to help you slowly withdraw from the nicotine addiction. These only work for about 10% of the people who use them. Another option is going cold turkey, and this works for up to 11% of the smokers who choose this option. Other well known methods to quit smoking include an herbal kit that can guide you through quitting. It has a success rate similar to that of nicotine patches and gums.

Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation is a very popular and highly successful option for those who want to quit smoking without weight gain or withdrawal. Hypnotherapy has proven to be highly effective with smokers who are trying to quit smoking. Hypnosis might sound like an extreme solution but it delivers solid results up to 70% of the time. This success rate is many times that of other methods.

The reason hypnosis for smoking cessation is so effective is that it while the physical addiction to nicotine makes up only about 10% of the cigarette smoking addiction, the emotional and mental aspects of the habit make up about 90% of the smoking addiction. Hypnosis treats this aspect of the addiction.

In addition, 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by stress, and hypnosis has proven to be a powerful tool that can help reprogram the mind to divert you from stressful thoughts, and towards more positive and relaxing thoughts. In addition, the very essence of hypnosis is that it incorporates a state of deep relaxation.

Another 45% of the smoking behavior is caused by conditioned responses. This is where smoking becomes associated with other stimuli at the unconscious level of mind. For example, if you smoke and simultaneously watch television, your unconscious will associate the image of a cigarette in your hand with the image of the TV. Each time you watch TV, your unconscious flashes an image of the cigarette in your hand, and you feel an urge to smoke.

Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation is regularly used to "extinguish" the conditioned responses by disassociating the unconscious links between cigarettes and TV, coffee, driving, working on your computer, or any other environment where an unconscious association has been formed.

In summary: While most smokers believe that their inability to quit smoking is based on their addiction to nicotine, in truth it is the mental and emotional aspects of a smoking addiction that present the largest barriers. Hypnotherapy was accepted by the American Medical Association in 1958 as an effective tool. Hypnosis for quitting smoking is the second most common use of hypnotherapy today.

While hourly rates for hypnotherapists continue to skyrocket, there are effective hypnosis CDs available that can greatly reduce the cost of obtaining hypnosis treatment. Since everyone is different, there are no specific "magic" words or post-hypnotic suggestions that will work for everyone. So when choosing hypnosis CDs, look for those that incorporate a broad variety of hypnotic and NLP techniques in a series of at least six or more sessions to obtain the best possible outcome. In any event, the cost of the best self hypnosis programs equates to far less than the amount that an average smoker spends every month on cigarettes.