Stop Smoking Herbs

One of the difficulties in trying to quit smoking is that smokers become physically dependant on nicotine. Smoking affects the parts of the brain that relate to reward and pleasure.

Short-term smoking cessation, that is, stopping smoking at the end of a stop-smoking program, is easier to attain than long-term smoking cessation.

Regardless of the method used to stop smoking, once the stop-smoking treatment method is withdrawn, a variety of factors can affect the individual so as to induce re-initiation of smoking.

Generally, if a person has stopped smoking for a full six months, the chances of starting smoking again are very low. Therefore, six month cessation rates, one year cessation rates, and two year cessation rates are similar regardless of the method employed.

Short term smoking cessation success may depend on the extent to which the intervention provides regular reinforcement of the stop-smoking effort. A person left to his or her own is more likely to resume smoking than a person who daily encounters someone who reinforces the stop smoking attempt.

Those who take up smoking in their teens and maintain the habit for many years have more difficult time quitting smoking than those who take up smoking later in life.

The “early-onset” smoking addiction may correlate with genetic and behavioral patterns that lead to addiction, while “late onset” smoking is more often a habit of choice. About 80% of U.S. smokers begin their habit by age 18.

Nicotine increases the amount of the neurotransmitter and dopamine. The nature of nicotine is that it creates a cycle of positive reinforcement within your brain that makes you want more.

Scientists have found that when you withdraw from chronic nicotine use, it results in changes in these neural pleasure pathways. And the effect on the brain is similar to what someone addicted to cocaine, opiates and other drugs experiences. Hence, depression and anxiety are common.

Fortunately, some resourceful modern herbalists began applying traditional knowledge to a modern problem. In Ayurvedic medicine, common garden variety oats is used to treat opium withdrawal.

The herbalist Anand, using a tincture applied this same reasoning to nicotine withdrawal, with significant results.

In a group of 26 heavy smokers, he gave an oat tincture, and in another group of 26, he gave a placebo.

The group who took the oat tincture smoked less cigarettes, and this effect remained for two months after they stopped treatment.

The herbalist Weiss theorizes that it is the sedative effect of oats. Oats contain as active constituents the indole alkaloid, gramine, and the alkaloids avenine and trigonelline. Oats are described in herbal medicine texts as helping create a feeling of well-being whilst simultaneously acting as a tonic to the nervous system. But unlike narcotics, these are mild, non-habit forming effects.

The following formula has been formulated for those trying to stop smoking. In a 50ml bottle, mix the following herbal tinctures:

• 15ml green oats
• 10ml white horehound
• 10ml mullein
• 5ml golden seal
• 10ml peppermint

Take 6 drops on the tongue whenever the craving to have a cigarette is felt.

Acupuncture is also an excellent support option. HerbMed offers the following herbal option, to be used on appropriate acupuncture points.

Mix oil of cloves, oil of wintergreen, an extract of evodia fruit, an extract of sichuan lovage rhizome, and msg, and apply to specific acupuncture points.

Unfortunately, they don't say which acupuncture points, but this may be determined by what each person presents with.