After quitting smoking, I no longer have the craving for cigarettes. Can I smoke a cigarette once in a while? Will it make the addiction relapse?

Introduction: In China, there are more than 300 million smokers, among which the proportion of people over the age of 15 smoking is as high as 26%. From the perspective of gender, the male smoking rate has also reached 50.5%. According to statistics, more than 1 million people in China lose their lives every year because of tobacco. Lung cancer, cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, tuberculosis and other fatal diseases are all related to smoking.

Smoking cessation is a long-standing topic among smokers, and it is also a happy thing to be able to successfully quit smoking. But there are also many smokers who have the idea of ​​smoking another cigarette after successfully quitting smoking. According to statistics, about 80% of smokers feel that after quitting smoking successfully and without the craving, it is okay to smoke a cigarette once in a while.

Can I still smoke once in a while after successfully quitting smoking?

Cigarettes in the human body will cause damage to organs and tissues through the respiratory tract, digestive tract and other parts. People who smoke for a long time will also cause damage to the brain nerves due to the nicotine in cigarettes , stimulating the brain to form a feeling of "addiction", and eventually form a cigarette addiction.

People do not smoke for a long time, eliminating the dependence of the brain on cigarettes and nicotine. Successfully quit smoking. At this time, people will not feel irritable , anxious and other emotions because they cannot smoke . During times of irritability, people may also have the idea of ​​wanting to smoke.

Occasionally smoking a cigarette, judging from the dose of carcinogens in cigarettes, will not cause great harm to the human body. From this point of view, smoking a cigarette once in a while poses little threat to health.

But from the perspective of quitting smoking , under the influence of emotions such as feeling uncomfortable and depressed, it is easy to form a certain thinking inertia when smoking a cigarette occasionally. You may feel that it is only once in a while, but after repeated this situation several times, it may also cause relapse because the nicotine in it stimulates the brain nerves again .

Quitting smoking is easy but quitting addiction is hard!

From a scientific point of view, smoking cessation is to eliminate people's dependence on tobacco. People who smoke for a long time will have the desire to smoke , anxiety , headache , depression and other emotions, and even have problems such as coughing , chest tightness and shortness of breath for a long time . In this case, after eliminating tobacco dependence, even if they have successfully quit smoking .

In the vast majority of people, about 3 to 6 months after quitting smoking, there will be no desire to smoke again, and the physical tobacco dependence basically disappears, replaced by psychological tobacco dependence. The reason why it is difficult to quit smoking is also because tobacco dependence has relatively strong recurrence.

Many people fail to quit smoking because after quitting smoking, although they can eliminate part of their physical tobacco dependence , they gradually arouse the human body's desire for tobacco when they indulge themselves again and again by "smoking a cigarette occasionally". rely. The final result is relapse , and the smoker is once again trapped in the "swamp" of smoking, unable to extricate himself.

Don't Quit Blindly If You're Not Ready

Many people expressed doubts, why do others always advise me to quit smoking, but you say not to quit smoking blindly? As a doctor, I have seen many times after quitting smoking, people who eventually relapsed because of "occasionally smoking a cigarette", and among these people, many of them were forced to quit smoking by their family members, and they were not ready to quit smoking .

Most of these people have thoughts like "it's okay to smoke once in a while" or "you quit smoking today, let's smoke a cigarette to celebrate". And in this case. The withdrawal reaction that gradually improves after quitting smoking will appear repeatedly as the human body is stimulated by inhaling cigarettes .

Some studies have also found that the probability of relapse is relatively low for people who are determined to quit smoking and who can persist in one-time smoking cessation . For those who are forced to quit smoking and have relapsed many times, the probability of failure to quit smoking is very high. The more relapses, the weaker people's willpower to quit smoking will be, and the more difficult it will be to quit smoking.

After successfully quitting smoking, should you smoke tea cigarettes or electronic cigarettes if you don’t smoke?

Among smokers, there is often such a misunderstanding that smoking is harmful to the body only because the cigarettes they smoke are not good, or there are more tar in the cigarettes. If you switch to products with low tar content or tea cigarettes and electronic cigarettes, it will not hurt your body. After quitting cigarettes, I hope to replace cigarettes with tea cigarettes and electronic cigarettes.

But such an idea is very undesirable. Because tea cigarettes and electronic cigarettes may contain some harmful substances. For example, tea tobacco contains a lot of substances such as theophylline and caffeine . Compared with ordinary cigarettes, it only lacks carcinogens such as nicotine and tar, but in essence, it still stimulates the human body. After lighting the tea cigarette, a large amount of carbon monoxide and harmful substances are also produced during the smoking process, which adhere to the lungs and increase the risk of disease.

Not to mention e-cigarettes, which contain a lot of chemical substances, and it only atomizes the smoke oil and inhales it into the human body. It may still cause harm to the human body due to inhalation of tar and harmful substances. For the sake of health, after quitting smoking, you should not smoke a single cigarette. Whether it is cigarettes, tea tobacco, or electronic cigarettes, they will cause more or less harm to the human body.

In addition to smoking tea cigarettes and electronic cigarettes, there are also misunderstandings about quitting smoking. Learn more

①Low tar smoke, Chinese herbal medicine cigarettes are less harmful

In the process of quitting smoking, many smokers will choose to buy low-tar cigarettes and Chinese herbal medicine cigarettes to help them quit smoking. But in fact, in the process of smoking these cigarettes, there will be " smoking compensation behaviors ", such as increasing the number of cigarettes smoked , increasing the amount of tobacco smoke inhaled , so that the harmful substances actually inhaled into the human body are not reduced, and the harm to the human body is not reduced. It will also be larger.

② Limit method, step-by-step smoking cessation

This method is very similar to people wishing to smoke another cigarette after successfully quitting smoking, but this kind of "limited supply" cigarettes may cause people to have a withdrawal reaction, and they have been waiting and eager to smoke " limited cigarettes ". Medium, not helpful for quitting smoking addiction.

If you have successfully quit smoking and your body no longer has the craving to smoke, it is best not to smoke a cigarette. Substituting other cigarettes, limiting smoking, etc. will not really help you quit smoking, but will stimulate your relapse.

Conclusion: After quitting smoking successfully, from the point of view of the health impact of smoking a cigarette occasionally, the harm to the human body is relatively small. But ask yourself, from the perspective of your heart, if you still want to smoke in some situations, does it also mean that you still have a cigarette addiction? Occasionally, it may not have any effect, but after a long time, will you also be shaken by this addiction and lead to relapse?