Studies reveal that nicotine replacements have no benefit for people who want to quit smoking

Studies reveal that nicotine replacements have no benefit for people who want to quit smoking

Studies have shown that the people who use nicotine gum or patches to get rid of smoking habit have no long-term benefits of these nicotine replacements.

Scientists believe that use of nicotine-replacement therapies, NRTs, might be useful in the first stage of quitting smoking but they have no long lasting benefits. The study also suggests
that the public health bodies should find other ways to reduce the number of people who smoke.

NRTs were used by people who smoke to reduce their tendency of smoking. The replacements do stop the habit of smoking in the people but the problem is that after leaving these replacements,
the likelihood of starting smoking again is doubled after six months or so and people restarts smoking, which makes the NRTs less impressive.

The scientists periodically asked questions to a group of people, between 2001 and 2006, who had recently quit smoking. After the question answer session, the scientists found that around
third relapsed every few years.

The ratio of relapsing in the people who used NRTs such as patches and gum was no different than those who had relied on sheer willpower or other methods to quit smoking.

The research was led by Gregory Connolly, the director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

Speaking to the media, Connolly said, “We didn’t study whether or not patches or gum increased quitting in the short term. There’s clear evidence that it does – people are twice as likely,
within 6 months, to quit than using a patch or counselling.”

He added, “There is a role for counselling if people get on the road to quitting, that’s where you start. What we did show is that the effect didn’t last in the long term.”

During the research, scientists tested 787 adults in Massachusetts who had recently quit smoking. They asked questions to the adults whether they had used a nicotine patch, nicotine gum,
nicotine inhaler, or nasal spray to help them quit smoking.

Out of those 787 adults, 192 people (22.6%) said that they had used NRTs. Two years later, about 30.6% of the group had relapsed, with 20.4% of the group saying they had used NRTs and
had relapsed.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=8783

Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Jan 10 2012. Filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry