Smokers frustrated with seeing their new year's resolution to quit go up in smoke may want to try picturing a life without cigarettes as they battle to butt out, a new study suggests.
The study, conducted by researchers and the University of Akron and published in the current issue of the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, looked at the use of a visualization techniques known as guided health imagery in helping test subjects in their efforts to quit smoking.
Those techniques involve teaching people to relax their muscles and open their minds to images of health and healthy living.
Participants who used the method, the findings suggested, were more successful in their battle to quit smoke over time.
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The study involved 71 smokers from a hospital outpatient clinic. They were then divided into two groups.
Both were given counselling and education to help them prepare to quit and were advised on how to handle things like withdrawal and cravings.
Participants in one group, however, also received additional visualization training and were given a 20-minute audio tape to use once a day as part of the efforts.
Similar techniques have been used to help surgery and cancer patients in their recovery and to aid in pain management. It has also been used as a means of helping people reverse negative thoughts in the wake of traumatic events.
For the smoking study, participants were guided through exercises that involved deep breathing, relaxation and mental exercises that included remembering peaceful images from childhood and picturing health-promoting activities like good nutrition and stretching.
In the end, researchers found that those who used guided health imagery were far more likely to still be non-smokers two years down the road.
At the 24-month mark, 26 per cent of participants who used visualization were still not smoking, according to the findings.
By comparison, only about 12 per cent of those who used the more traditional remedies to quit smoking were still off the cigarettes.
“This research suggests that increased use of guided imagery techniques by clinicians to help their patients quit smoking could make a positive contribution to [the United States'] goal of reducing the number of adults who smoke to 12 per cent by 2010,” the report said.
In Canada, recent figures have suggested that smoking continues to decline. Numbers released by Statistics Canada this summer said about 5.1 million Canadians aged 15 and over smoked either daily or occasionally last year, representing about one-fifth of that segment of the population.
