Cigarettes are one of the hardest addictions to leave behind. According to a survey called Vigitel (Surveillance of Risk Factors and Protection for Chronic Diseases by Telephone Survey), released by the Ministry of Health in 2012, about 14.8% of the Brazilian population maintains the tobacco habit. The results refer to the year 2011, when the survey was conducted, and were surprising, since this is the first time since the measurement began in 2006, that this percentage is below 15%. This drop in the number of smokers proves that people are indeed concerned about the ills of smoking, although quitting is not always simple.
To deal with addiction, the main thing is to have willpower, but some treatments may be recommended to contribute to the user. Individual psychological counseling and group therapies are examples of treatments indicated to help the individual understand addiction and learn to control it better.
In turn, chewing gum and adhesives for continuous use promise to bring a significant result, acting directly on the body's need for nicotine. These products theoretically replace cigarettes because they act as nicotine replenishers for the body, inhibiting craving and thereby contributing to the cure of addiction. It is an almost perfect and widespread solution for treating smokers, but new research from Massachusetts, the United States, shows that adhesives and chewing gum are in fact not effective.
Did the researchers follow for ten years? between the years 2000 and 2010 -, 1,916 people. Among them, 787 claimed to have recently quit smoking. Every two years, an interview was conducted with the volunteers to gather information about the use of patches and gum, periods of withdrawal from the addiction and eventual relapses.
In each phase, approximately one third of the participants had some type of relapse, with no distinction between those who did and those who did not use nicotine replacement products. Apparently, volunteers who used these products on their own, without expert guidance, were twice as likely to relapse.
Products to help you quit smoking are often tested and often have positive results in people who are starting to detox. Precisely for these benefits in short-term studies, many treatments recommend the use of patches, chewing gum and other products. The difference from these tests to recent research is that it followed patients over a long period of time, which made their results differ.
The explanation for these results is that nicotine replenishers function in the short term as substitutes for addiction itself, but are unable to curb relapses in the longer term. What doctors and psychotherapists recommend, for those who want to quit addiction once and for all, is that there is a lot of willpower and perseverance against relapses. The support of family and friends, as well as an expert? as a psychologist or therapist - it's also crucial.
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