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Giving up smoking - mustering the willpower
Once again, I failed to quit smoking on national No Smoking Day. I got through the day but at 6pm, I cracked and had a cigarette. My boyfriend hates smoking and I really want to stop but just cannot muster the willpower. Is there anything you know of that can help me?
Up to 80% of smokers who do managed to quit will start smoking again and so researchers at the Centre for Pharmacognosy & Phytotherapy at the University of London are now investigating the usefulness of the herb St John’s Wort as an anti-smoking agent. The theory is that nicotine may act in the body of some smokers like an antidepressant and so a herb that is more commonly used for the relief of mild to moderate depression could help when willpower fails.
The researchers, who will publish their findings in the summer, suggest people with negative moods are more likely to start smoking in the first place, more likely to become dependent and more likely to have trouble stopping. If this is right, then St John’s Wort, which can lift mood by boosting production of the brain’s feel-good chemical, serotonin, really could help.
Phytotherapists here are not the only ones intrigued by the idea that an everyday herb could save billions in the cost of treating smoking-related diseases. Here, the cost to the NHS is an estimated £1.5 billion a year - a figure the Government has pledged to reduce by £1.5 million over the coming decade. In America, scientists working for the National Institute of Cancer (NIC) are also looking at how a natural antidepressant can help.
Meanwhile, if you are living in Eire, you are still going to have to steal across the border into Northern Ireland to buy St John’s Wort over-the-counter. Just over a year ago, the Irish Government banned shop sales after a handful of reports linked it with side-effects including breakthrough bleeding in young women taking the contraceptive pill.
St John’s Wort now has to carry a health warning asking people to consult their doctor before taking it in they already take anti-coagulant drugs, such as warfarin, for heart disease, if they have been taking the pill for several years and if they are already taking prescription antidepressants.
All herbs are powerful medicines so this advice is common sense but the link with the pill has not been investigated and only came to light after eight women wrote to a Swedish manufacturer complaining of breakthrough bleeding which stopped when they discontinued taking the herb.