The dangers of smoking. Smoking does many things to your lungs. If you have seen the before and after pictures, you know how smoking takes a healthy pink lung and turns it into a black unhealthy one. Smoking can bring about cancer, emphysema, asthma and can increase your chances of heart attack and stroke. What causes this? The chemicals in cigarettes are outstanding and many of them are poisonous. There is also benzene, a chemical in gasoline, cadmium, found in batteries and oil paint, and hydrogen cyanide that cause headaches, dizziness and nausea.

There are actually 4000 chemicals and of these 43 are cancer causing. One ingredient is acetone, an ingredient in nail polish remover. Arsenic. That is right, arsenic, the ingredient that is used to kill rats! Arsenic is what gives your lips a burn and your mouth a very bad taste. Not to mention the odor of cigarette smoke on your clothes, hair and possessions. Your appearance is also affected. Yellowing of the teeth and a poor complexion. There is a social stigma associated with smoking.

What Happens When You Quit

Almost immediately, your body begins to heal itself. This is what happens to your lungs after you quit smoking. Within 20 minutes of quitting your heart rate begins to drop. Twelve hours off the smokes brings your carbon monoxide levels to normal. Between two weeks and three months smoke free you begin to lower your risk of heart attacks, and your lung function improves.

Within one to nine months, you will find that your coughing level is lowered and your lung capacity increases. One year, and you’ve already cut your risk of a coronary heart disease to to half of what it was when you were smoking. Fifteen years and you now have the same risk of a non smoker of having a coronary heart attack.

What Can Hypnosis Do?

Hypnosis is not what the cartoons and movies portray. You do not sit in front of a creepy man as he sways a dangly object in front of your face. The goal of hypnosis is to suppress the conscious side of the brain, which is the "thinking" part of the brain with which you function most of the day. The purpose is to let the subconscious become available for tweaking by you and the hypnotist. Often, the hypnotist will work to teach your subconscious to equate smoking with something unpleasant, like nausea. While counseling only works on the conscious part of the brain, hypnosis works on the deep rooted subconscious levels of automatic thought.

Many hypnotherapists can help you quit smoking with just a single session of treatment.