Auriculotherapy curbs desire to smoke
ST. LOUIS — There’s no question trying to extinguish the habit of lighting up is hard.
“I want to quit. I have tried before and I quit for a year and a half, and then I went back little by little,” said Elizabeth Bleitner, a smoker for 25 years.
But if you’re trying to stop smoking, auriculotherapy might be your best bet.
In auriculotherapy, a mild electrical stimulation is used on the ear where there are multiple acupuncture points.
“There’s an addictive center in the brain and it helps basically stop activity in the area so that the craving, the addiction, the need for nicotine isn’t there. So it eliminates the headaches or the nausea or dizziness, irritability or the jitters that patients get when they’re trying to stop smoking,” said Dr. Michelle Smith.
“It’s not painful at all, and actually, it’s pretty relaxing,” Bleitner said.
It’s a procedure that requires three doctor visits and takes about 30 minutes per visit, but in order to have success, you also need to change your behavior.
“So many of them will say, ‘I like my cigarette on my way to work at this stoplight, it’s a habit.’ So if they don’t have the cigarette, they don’t have the withdrawal symptoms. It’s easier for them to change their behavior,” Smith said.
Smith also recommends saving the money you would have used on cigarettes for something you can look forward to.
“To stop smoking, there isn’t this immediate gratification like there is for losing weight. ‘Oh I’m losing weight, I get to buy new clothes.’ So with the smoking program, we encourage them to take the money they were spending on cigarettes and put it in a tin and save toward something they really want,” Smith said.
It’s not 100 percent, but when it comes to stomping out smoking, it’s more effective than anything else out there.
“It’s 85 percent at three months. The next best thing out there is the nicotine inhaler and then Chantix,” Smith said.
Bar provides temptation for man trying to stop smoking
Ed Schneiderheinze, a Strafford man trying to quit smoking after 23 years, traveled for his job last week, creating a new set of temptations.
Schneiderheinze often works 12- to 16-hour days when he’s on the road installing electronic bingo equipment. He likes to unwind at a bar with a beer and a cigarette. On Thursday, he was in Newark, N.J., with a Samuel Adams winter lager but no cigarette.
“One of the things that would always get me back into smoking was drinking a beer and hanging out with the guys,” he said.
His usual routine while working included smoking after he left a building. “I find myself looking for my cigarettes,” he said.
Schneiderheinze said he’s having more temptations to smoke, but the urge isn’t quite as difficult.
“I’m not having the difficulty as long,” he said. “The struggles are definitely getting easier, but there’s more of them.”
Schneiderheinze, 38, quit smoking Jan. 2. He is using nicotine patches and lozenges in his attempt to quit.
Part of Schneiderheinze’s motivation was his mother-in-law, a longtime smoker who now has cancer. She is expected to have her larynx removed, which will affect her ability to speak.
The News-Leader first profiled Schneiderheinze on Jan. 10 in a story about quitting smoking, and we are following his attempts to stay cigarette-free for a few weeks.
University of Michigan ready to go smoke-free
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) – Smokers will not be able to light up on the University of Michigan campus beginning July 1st.
University President Mary Sue Coleman approved a final plan on how to implement the University’s non-smoking policy.
The U of M created the plan after listening for more than a year to extensive input from people on campus and in the surrounding community of Ann Arbor.
“At the outset, we said we wanted to hear from representatives of all members of our community—faculty, staff, students, area residents, smokers, nonsmokers and never smokers—and we did,” said Kenneth Warner, former dean of the School of Public Health and the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor of Public Health.
“Five different subcommittees compiled surveys, conducted focus groups, held numerous meetings, and more, to get input from those who would be impacted by this change. The final report is a reflection of the input we received,” said Warner.
The U of M says the steering committee for the Smoke-free University Initiative’s report includes 14 recommendations that define campus smoke-free boundaries, commit to treatment and support for those who wish to receive assistance to quit, and outline expectations for compliance. Among the recommendations:
• While all U-M facilities, buildings and grounds will be smoke free, smoking will not be prohibited on sidewalks adjacent to public thoroughfares on the Ann Arbor campuses
• All parking structures and surface lots should be smoke free. This does not include smoking in privately owned vehicles within these locations.
• Peer support, supervisory oversight and voluntary compliance should be relied upon to lead to behavioral changes over time. Smokers refusing to extinguish the product or repeat offenders of the policy should be addressed through existing disciplinary or other appropriate processes.
• U-M should provide resources to support managers, supervisors, students, faculty and staff with methods to address violations in a respectful manner.
• MHealthy and the University Health Service Health Promotion and Community Relations department should support faculty, staff and students in their stop-smoking efforts.
Coleman announced in April 2009 the plan for all three U-M campuses to go smoke free. A target date for implementation was set as July 1, 2011, to allow the subcommittees—facilities, grounds and the Ann Arbor interface; faculty and staff; guests, events and athletics; student life; and communications—the opportunity to gather input and make recommendation to the steering committee. It also allowed time for each campus to develop its own implementation plan.
“We were very pleased that so many in the university took the time to express their opinions, ask thoughtful questions and challenge the steering committee to come up with a policy that considers the impact on all of its constituents. We also are grateful to the many people who spent numerous hours working on the five subcommittees,” said Dr. Robert Winfield, U-M’s chief health officer and director of University Health Service.
“We are confident that with all of this great input we have a policy that achieves our goal of promoting a healthy campus while being as respectful as possible to the needs and concerns of all in our community.”
The University of Michigan says one of the questions heard most often from the various groups was about how boundaries would be defined. While the report calls for all university facilities, buildings and grounds, including athletic properties, to be smoke-free, it makes two exceptions: smoking inside personal vehicles and along main thoroughfares. The ban does not include smokeless tobacco products.
The steering committee recommendation that smoking should not be prohibited along public thoroughfares was a decision based on the fact that the streets are not university-owned and, therefore, U-M has no authority over the adjacent sidewalks.
To be consistent, it also treated the sidewalks along major roads on North Campus—which are university-owned—as areas outside of the smoking ban. Sidewalks within a campus area, such as the Diag, however, will be smoke free. Some signage, website maps and the presence of smoking receptacles in those places that are not included in the ban will help define the areas, leaders say.
In order to keep people from having to walk through smoke-filled areas, the ban also included sections of sidewalk adjacent to access drives, loading docks, parking structures, parking lots or along driveways—even if these areas are along major thoroughfares.
A second question frequently asked by students, faculty and staff was how the policy would be enforced.
“This was carefully considered by the group and it was decided that we would rely on voluntary compliance, along with peer and supervisory support, rather than fines or other means of enforcement,” said Laurita Thomas, associate vice president for human resources.
