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Health psychology is probably the most recent development in this process of including psychology in an understanding of health. It was described by Matarazzo as ‘the aggregate of the speci?c educational, scienti?c and professional contribution of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the promotion and treatment of illness and related dysfunction’ (Matarazzo 1980: 815). Health psychology again challenges the mind–body split by suggesting a role for the mind in both the cause and treatment of illness but (more…)

The first thing to do is set a date when you are going to quit smoking. Let’s start one week from today. That will give you plenty of time to practice with the weapons in your arsenal. Eight days from today, it will be the beginning of the end of your smoking habit.

Days 1 and 2

Examine your smoking behavior for the first two days. Every time you light up, ask yourself:

1. Why am I smoking this cigarette?

2. Would this be an easy one or a difficult one to do without?

3. If I did not smoke this cigarette, what would I do instead?

Day 3

Let’s get out and test your weapons today.

At least once today, use your weapons to shoot down the urge to smoke.

During the five minutes that it will take for the urge to pass, try out some of your arsenal. Try one, or all, or find a combination that works for you.

Day 4

Today is the big testing day. If you haven’t already tried it, skip those one or two cigarettes that you feel may be the toughest to give up in your daily routine. Pick the ones that you rated “difficult” during your monitoring period.

Remember, this is a practice period, and you must not get upset if you are unable to give up a difficult cigarette. You must practice and experiment with your different weapons to realize how you can be more effective.

If you found skipping that cigarette very difficult or even failed in the end, review any factor that got in the way of your success. The most common causes of difficulty or failure that a potential quitter faces are:

Chemical properties of addiction

When you do not have that cigarette, you feel lousy. If you are a heavy smoker, a nicotine patch may help to relieve your bad feelings.

Social pressures

You may find yourself in a situation (card game, party, coffee break) during which you would normally smoke. It may help to let others know of your desire to quit, and also your reasons for quitting. Enlisting the aid of a non smoker to confide in may also help. Make sure that he or she is aware of your goals so that they do not say or do anything to instill a negative impact on your desire to quit.

If you feel that you may not resist the social pressures of smoking, consider the option of giving up these social encounters for two or three weeks until the urge passes and you can be comfortable again.

Tension and negative emotion

A crisis occurs during your work or personal day, and one of the main reasons for you to smoke has been tension reduction. Try to deal with your negative emotions and use the tension reducing methods that we talked about earlier. Get away from the area that the tension is associated with. Take a walk, or go to another room. You may also find that nicotine gum will give you enough tension relief to get through.

Days 5, 6, and 7.

You are now heading down the home stretch. In the next three days, your goal is to come out of this week smoking half the cigarettes that you would normally smoke. If you started as a one pack a day smoker, cut back to ten cigarettes per day, or less.

The fewer the better. During days 5 and 6, set your goals toward achieving positive results on day 7. Maintain your smoking record during these three days, and continue to decrease your dependency on nicotine.

What do you do if you still have doubts? This is probably due to your chemical dependency on nicotine. It is a highly powerful drug, and many factors have been working together to make you dependent. Discuss with your doctor about the feasibility of a patch or nicotine gum. Nicotine is the hook that has gotten you to smoke which carries the harmful effects to your body. With the help from the patch or the gum, you will have all he tools you need to successfully quit. The patch or gum will give you a steady influx of nicotine into your system, which will be reduced slowly over a period of several weeks. DO NOT SMOKE WHILE ON THE PATCH. You could experience a dangerous overdose of nicotine.

NOTE; Pregnant women should not use the gum or patch. Smokers with any form of heart disease should consult with a physician before using.

There are several weapons that you can use in your fight to quit from smoking:

EACH OF THESE WEAPONS WORK- THEY HAVE BEEN PROVEN

You may use one, all, or a combination of several to achieve your goal. The urge to smoke is immediate, and usually lasts for five minutes. If you can resist for that period of time, you reduce the urge.

1. Take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, and exhale as if you had just taken your first puff on a cigarette. Part of the feeling you get from smoking is a direct result of taking a deep (more…)

Quitting is hard. If you have tried to quit smoking, you know how hard it can be. It is hard because nicotine is a very addictive drug some times it can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

Many people have found that including physical activity in their program to quit smoking has added a tremendous benefit to assist in quitting. There are many reasons for this:

When people are more active, they gain confidence and like themselves more. They feel more energy, and are more capable of dealing with tension in their lives. With increased activity, the smell of tobacco actually becomes offensive. Whenever you feel the need to smoke after you have decided to quit, get up and move around instead. A brief physical activity can provide you with the lift that you may have received from nicotine

Nicotine creates a biochemical reaction in your body that has an immediate effect on your mood, your ability to reason, and your metabolism. Even if you only smoke a few cigarettes a day, you do feel so bad when you try to quit? The more that you smoke, the higher level of chemical dependency will be reached. Light smokers can also become just as dependent on (more…)

According to health care experts, if you smoke, you will be twelve times more likely to die from lung cancer. Now let’s just think for one short moment: wouldn’t it be very important for you to increase your chances of living from two to twelve times longer, gain many extra years of happy, healthy existence, and save thousands of dollars in increased medical costs?

• 10 times more likely to die from Cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus risks.

• 12 times more likely to die from lung cancer or some form of lung diseases.

• 10 times more likely to die from cancer of the larynx.

• 6 times more likely to die of heart disease.

• And you will be twice as likely to die of a stroke.

The biomedical model of medicine can be understood in terms of its answers to the following questions:

What causes illness? According to the biomedical model of medicine, diseases either come from outside the body, invade the body and cause physical changes within the body, or originate as internal involuntary physical changes. Such diseases may be caused by several factors such as chemical imbalances, bacteria, viruses and genetic predisposition.

Who is responsible for illness? Because illness is seen as arising from biological changes beyond their control, individuals are not seen as responsible for their illness. They are regarded as victims of some external force causing internal changes.

How should illness be treated? The biomedical model regards treatment in terms (more…)

Why do we sleep? Is its purpose merely to give the body a rest from activity and store up energy? Maybe, but why, then, do we sleep even if we are ill and are forced to stay in bed all day? Or why do newborn babies, even before they are crawling or walking, sleep so much? Maybe infants need to sleep so much because they are doing so much growing. If so, then why do adults sleep if they are already finished growing? Or, if the function of sleep is to give the body a rest, why is the brain and cardiovascular system so active during REM sleep?

These questions go on and on and have plagued scientists and philosophers alike for decades, (more…)

It is often said that you need 7–8 hours of sleep: any less and you’re not getting enough, any more and you’re being lazy. This is one of the most common misconceptions about sleep—that the amount you need is constant across all people. Nothing could further from the truth. The average number of hours of sleep an adult human needs is 7–8 hours per night. And that’s all this number is, an average. Some need more, some need less. Some people need only 5–6 hours a night, while others need 9–10 hours. In fact, the amount of sleep (more…)

In the 24 h before labour there is an increase in oestrogen secretion and a reduction in progesterone. Immediately after delivery there is a rapid reduction in secretion of both these hormones and a reduction in NREM and REM sleep. Maternal factors related to caring for the new-born child and the need for feed-ing also contribute. This is followed by a period of hypervigilance for the child at night and a reduction in total sleep time and sleep ef?ciency for at least 1 month after delivery. Postnatal depression may also cause insomnia.