Women Have Hard Time Quitting




For many people smoking is a way to relieve stress or perfect means to cope with anxiety. Although studies show that nicotine can do nothing good and only adds to the stress, many smokers all over the world still believe in the myth. Since women have more emotional swings than men, it is harder for them to quit smoking, because they are ready to get another cigarette as soon as something goes wrong or they have emotional pressure.

There are different ways to quit smoking, but all of them might be too weak if confronted by an acute emotion (when a person suddenly gets upset). Saul Shiffman, a psychologist from the University of Pittsburgh, says that among smokers who try to quit without special treatments like nicotine replacement therapy, three-fourth come back to cigarettes within just first week. To his opinion, the main secret of quitting smoking successfully is to avoid acute emotions, mood swings and to stay calm in any situation.

The data shows that in the end both men and women have the same rate of successful quitters, but it does not consider the number of times each particular individual tried to give up cigarettes. In reality things come out a little differently: women are more sensitive to stressful situations and this makes them return to cigarettes more often than men. The reason why the data comes up even is because females keep trying to quit, till they finally succeed. Individual studies prove that at any given time women have about 25% lower success rate in quitting smoking than men.

Every smoking female might have dozens of reasons to quit: health concerns, relationships with other people, avoiding giving bad example to children, religious aspects, the matters of beauty and attraction. But at the same time, there is often something that “hits” and she cannot stay away from cigarettes any longer. Carolyn Mazure, a professor of psychology at Yale School of Medicine and an expert on depression and addictive behaviors says, “Women often report smoking is helpful in reducing negative mood, even enhancing positive mood, managing the stress of daily life and also managing appetite and weight gain. Women are looking to cigarettes to help them with those different situations, and as a consequence, it’s often more difficult for women [than for men] to give up their cigarettes.”

Since women are more vulnerable to stress and give up to nicotine addiction too quickly, the scientists of the Yale University are working on special treatments which could be helpful to them. Unfortunately, the popular nicotine replacement devices such as patches and gums work better on males and sometimes do not help females at all.

Mainly the scientists are looking at various medications. They are trying to see if some pills which reduce anxiety and stress could eliminate the urge to smoke as well. These studies are still in development and their results have not been unveiled yet. The researchers are going to try different medications as well, for example, those that suppress appetite.

Sherry McKee, a psychologist at the Yale University, says that talk therapies should work as well. During a course of treatment, the patients learn about various ways to deal with stressful situations without coming to cigarettes. Here they are reminded that there were times in their lives when anxiety and any mood change were coped without smoking and there are still millions of people on the planet who do not consider acute emotions as the reason to grab a cigarette. Support from family and friends, sport, hobbies, and distracting activities are only few ways to return to a better mood without a cigarette.

Nicole Pritt

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Posted on February 3, 2010 
Filed Under How to Quit Smoking, Smoking and Women, Stop Smoking

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