Vitality News Health Articles

If you think smokeless tobacco is “up to snuff” and safe, think again. Whatever you call it - chewing, dipping or spitting - it is every bit as harmful as smoking. Many medical researchers think more so because people are unaware of the threats. Cancers of the mouth, lips, tongue and throat can quickly progress in people who use smokeless tobacco and cause debilitating and grotesque - even lethal - results.

Even with the painful and dangerous effects of smokeless tobacco, quitting with traditional techniques remains extremely demanding. Many people think the reason lies in nicotine, a natural, super toxic chemical found in tobacco that is the plant’s guard to prevent being eaten by insects. Analyzing equal amounts, nicotine is more lethal than strychnine or snake venom, and three times deadlier than arsenic.

When dipping, the nicotine makes its way to the brain in less than 10 seconds, where it generates a flood of dopamine, which brings about a relaxing feeling. Nicotine also promotes adrenaline production, so it both energizes and calms. However, the mental part of smokeless tobacco addiction is much stronger and leads to many more obstacles to quitting smokeless tobacco than nicotine.

Many users took their first chew as early as nine years old. In just a few months, using smokeless tobacco becomes a fixed habit that delivers reliable stress relief. In addition to the psychological conditioning, a social conditioning transpires, as images of many sports celebrities dipping also attract young users.

Understanding that there are individual emotional and physical issues that contribute to a chewing habit makes it easier to develop a plan to prevail smokeless tobacco addiction. Let’s examine each component separately and look at effective methods to curb them.

Dipping for Relaxation and Pleasure: Just like using a pacifier to soothe an anxious baby, over the course of time, people who use tobacco products begin to associate putting something in their mouths with satisfaction and relaxation. Curbing the effects of tobacco usage means addressing all issues of the addiction.

Tobacco Dipping is a Conditioned Response: The classic case in point of a conditioned response relates to Pavlov and his dogs, which were trained to anticipate food - and thus began salivating - after a bell was rung. In relation, if, for example, you always use chewing tobacco after each meal, you will consequently develop a desire to chew when you are done eating.

In your mind, the images of folding the napkin and pushing the play away may be connected to using snuff, even though you are not conscious of it. Developing awareness of the trigger images or situations can help you overcome cravings.

The Physical Addiction to Nicotine, But ! : Despite the powerful addiction, doctors maintain that the physical component of nicotine addiction is quelled after people quit using tobacco for a week. It’s my solid belief that nicotine addiction comprises a scant 10 percent of smokeless tobacco dependency. As such, 90 percent of the battle to quit dipping involves overcoming the mental and emotional components. So what does this mean for people like you who want to quit?

Quitting becomes much more feasible if you can:

A. Deal with and eliminate the tension or anxiety that compels you to use smokeless tobacco B. Cancel the conditioned responses to chew in particular settings

But how does a person defeat those issues?

Self-hypnosis offers a way to deal with the emotional and psychological parts of the addiction while reducing struggles, which will eliminate the symptoms of withdrawal. When we recognize how self-hypnosis works, it makes the decision to quit dipping much easier to accept.

When people dip for relaxation and pleasure, it’s to calm anxious feelings. People often play the same images over in their minds, like a bad film, which leaves them feeling anxious and tense. Using self-hypnosis and various Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, you retrain your brain to instantaneously and naturally stop stress-inducing images and trade them with calming images and mental movies. This produces satisfaction and relaxation while eliminating cravings and oral compulsions. You shake the inclination to put the chew in your mouth, and you don’t get any urge to substitute food in its place. This quells weight gain.

In order to battle the conditioned response of chewing smokeless tobacco, the NLP Flash technique erases the associations of dipping during certain activities or situations. This means your subconscious will no longer trigger the craving. Further, the Flash can even be used to create a compulsion to deny smokeless tobacco.

Employing specific and strategic NLP procedures makes the decision to quit dipping effortless and painless by avoiding symptoms of withdrawal, cravings and weight gain. The method depends on retraining the unconscious mind to follow the same thought patterns that produce your mental addiction to smokeless tobacco in the first place, to eliminate the compulsion.

Your brain is a powerful instrumentfar more powerful than an addiction. With steadfastness and the help of self-hypnosis and NLP, you can quit smokeless tobacco forever.

Alan B. Densky, CH is a pioneer in the use of NLP stop smoking methods. He offers a powerful Stop Chewing Tobacco program based on those same methods. Learn more at his Neuro-VISION hypnosis site where you can see Free hypnotherapy videos and articles.

- Alan B. Densky, CH