Photo of Someone Smoking stop Smoking

Published on January 19, 2009 7:46 AM

Photo of Someone Smoking stop Smoking

After scanning the human brain, scientists reported that kicking the smoking habit may be out of conscious control. Smokers and even non-smokers know that kicking the bad habit is very hard.

After a recent study, researchers said that now is enough just seeing a photo of someone smoking for to quit.

As was said before, the brain scan showed that smokers can quit smoking out of their desire. New brain scans taken during normal smoking activity and 24 hours after quitting showed a marked increase in a particular kind of brain activity when quitters see photographs of people smoking, said Joseph McClernon, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

Scientists investigated the brain area which is responsible for automatic responses (such as controlling the movements needed to ride a bike or brush one's teeth), which means that quitting smoking may be out of a person’s conscious control.

McClernon added that quitting smoking dramatically increases brain activity in response to seeing smoking cues, which seems to indicate that quitting smoking is actually sensitizing the brain to these smoking cues, thus explain why most smokers who try to quit tend to relapse.

After this research, scientists once again sustained that smokers need for more help and not only to tell them to resist the cigarettes temptation. For example smokers need for more anti-smoking pictures and for more nicotine patches which will make them to kick the habit.

"We also have to help them break that habitual response," McClernon said. This research is focusing on the use of a nicotine patch to quit smoking and to break the mental link between cigarettes and nicotine.