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Freedom from Smoking Related Links
Locations (Click on location for directions and hours)
(262) 437-7347
(414) 433-4931
(608) 332-6292
(608) 332-6292
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How Laser Therapy Can Help You Quit Smoking
When a person smokes, they breathe in over four thousand dangerous chemicals into their bodies. The body needs to detoxify these chemicals as fast as it can to limit the damage. This detoxification process requires energy, so when a person smokes they are forcing their bodies to release stores of energy and endorphins.
Normal non-smokers release these endorphins and energy on a regular basis throughout the day, but smokers suffer because the smoking sabotages this process. After smoking ten, twenty, thirty or more cigarettes a day for any amount of time, the body no longer knows how to release these endorphins and energy on its own without the cigarettes. That's why smokers get trapped into an addiction, because when they try to quit their bodies typically feel lousy for a few days as it struggles to relearn this normal process all over again.
This is where laser therapy comes to the rescue. Since the lasers help the body release endorphins without smoking, the person quitting won't experience the withdrawal discomfort or cravings as much as they would have otherwise. The treatments also help to calm and relax the person, relieving them from what typically would be a stressful experience. And since the treatments also tend to enhance the energy systems in the body, a person recovers from tobacco addiction more quickly than other means for quitting. These are just a few of the reasons why laser therapy works so well.
Development of Laser Therapy
Lasers have been used in medical procedures for over three decades, and they are being called upon for an ever increasing range of applications, from precision surgery to restoring good vision to stimulating cellular healing and the rejuvenation of tissue. New applications are constantly being explored and developed. About thirty years ago it was discovered that certain types of lasers could be used to stimulate meridian points on the body, similar to acupuncture. This technique came to be known as laser therapy. In many applications, laser therapy was found to be more effective than traditional acupuncture. Special techniques were developed to address specific ailments. One of the applications was to help people overcome addictions, and treating people for nicotine addiction in particular proved to be very effective. As pioneering laser therapists refined their techniques, they began to experience success rates approaching 85%, which is better than three times the rate of any other modality for treating tobacco addiction. Understandably, this is quite exciting, because no other method for smoking cessation, including medications, has ever sustained a success rate higher than 27%. Yet studies and clinical experience continue to indicate success rates that typically range from 55 to 90%. This is good news if you want to finally quit smoking, and bad news for tobacco companies and anyone else who wants you use their drugs.
While the efficacy rate is exciting, there are other appealing aspects of laser therapy: it’s drug-free, pain-free, absolutely safe, produces no side-effects, and demands very little time. Clearly, this qualifies as a viable and attractive solution for people who are tired of smoking and don't want to go through the side effects and expense of medications.
Most of the development of laser therapy has taken place in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Canada, and Switzerland. It is a relatively new concept in the United States, but within the past several years the FDA has approved the safety of the laser devices and allows laser therapy for smoking cessation to be practiced as clinical trials. As a result, many successful clinics like ours have opened up around America, helping over 600,000 Americans to date quit smoking. Laser Wellness Center is delighted to bring this revolutionary new technology to your community.
Technique
Acupuncture, a highly refined system for addressing physiological issues, has identified channels of energy coursing through the body along with special meridian points along those channels that can be stimulated in certain combinations to induce specific physiological responses. For over 5,000 years this technique has been used to relieve all kinds of pain, improve digestion, stimulate the immune system, and restore good health - among many other things. It is believed that when meridian points are stimulated - traditionally with needles - the body and brain sense, interpret, and respond to these in different ways according to the specific combination of points that are stimulated. Some common responses include increasing or slowing the metabolism, improving circulation, lowering blood pressure, relaxing the body, and inducing a calm feeling of well-being.
Pioneers began experimenting with lasers as an alternative to needles, and discovered that lasers could be extremely effective in stimulating meridian points. There is a fundamental difference, though, between the strictly physical stimulation of needles and that of the lasers. The laser is essentially focused energy with special qualities related to wavelength, energy density, pulsing rate, and even color. When this energy interacts with your cells, a sort of chemical reaction takes place known as photo-bio-stimulation (consider how plants cells interact with sunlight in the process of photosynthesis - creating food for the plant). This reaction can have a rejuvenating effect on the cells. It also stimulates the meridian point and is sensed by the body/brain.
The way your brain reacts is similar to a reflex - it's pre-programmed to respond in a certain way to certain stimulations. There are centers in your brain that manage such things as habits, addictions, cravings, desires, and so on. Stimulating the correct combination of points can cause the brain to stimulate or suppress such centers. Another reaction is for the brain to instigate production of endorphins. These are your body's natural 'feel-good' chemicals. Any pleasurable sensation you experience - whether it's a result of receiving a compliment, earning a big raise, eating a good meal, making love, laughing with friends, etc - is accompanied by endorphins. Physiologically endorphins promote good health, and psychologically they instill a sense of well-being.
Nicotine and other narcotics artificially stimulate the production of serotonin and dopamine - feel-good chemicals of the brain. We are naturally wired to seek out pleasure, and since the nicotine in cigarettes causes the release of pleasure-inducing endorphins, our brain makes the association that smoking cigarettes is desirable. As the action is repeated, the brain/body is conditioned to crave smoking. Commonly the impulse quickly grows to a point where it becomes an addiction. Beyond this physical addiction, psychologically the action of putting the cigarette to the lips becomes a deeply ingrained habit.
A pattern develops as a person smokes throughout the day. Start smoking, and the endorphin levels in the brain go up, giving a smoker a 'high' sensation. After a while the nicotine subsides, as do the endorphins, and they come back down. Soon enough they begin to feel agitated, and it's time for another cigarette. This pattern of 'highs' chasing 'lows' is very stressful on the body - and a hard habit to break.
Cigarette smoke is full of carbon monoxide (yes, the same gas in car exhaust that kills people every year). As a person smokes, the carbon monoxide levels in the blood increase, replacing the oxygen levels. This increase in carbon monoxide and decrease in oxygen suffocates every cell in the body and dulls normal cellular functioning. The smoker experiences this as calm, the same calm a person feels as they succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning. As the carbon monoxide leaves the body, cellular functions wake up again, sometimes overdoing it in an attempt to make up for the damage, and smokers can unfortunately experience this as anxiety in comparison to the previous calm.
When nicotine 'highs' coincide with carbon monoxide 'calms', it's easy to see how smoking can feel so good, and when 'lows' accompany 'anxieties' the urge to light up can be compelling.
When a person quits smoking, their regular intake of nicotine ceases, the artificially induced endorphins stops flowing, and the body/brain feels comparably miserable without it, undergoing stress as it struggles to restore biochemical balance. There is no carbon monoxide to dull these sensations, so a person feels anxious and miserable. These are the dreaded withdrawal symptoms that accompany most attempts to quit smoking (or any other addiction).
That's where the laser comes in. By stimulating key meridian points, your body begins producing endorphins. Unlike the stimulation of endorphins in the brain by nicotine, which lasts less than twenty minutes, laser therapy triggers endorphin production in a series of brain centers and glands around the body that lasts several days. The result is that endorphin levels remain in the body at fairly healthy levels for a good while. This is very good, as there are no 'highs' or 'lows' to screw up your system, just a mildly pleasant feeling of calm and well-being that lasts for a few days.
Since your body isn't being ravaged by stressful mood swings and miserable withdrawal symptoms, your physical cravings for a cigarette are greatly reduced, and it will be easier to take on the emotional/mental battle. Laser Wellness Center will prepare you for this challenge, and support you the entire way.
Should the urge to light up become annoying, simply give us a call and come in for another treatment. Most people come in for two to three treatments.
Oak Creek: 414-433-4931 Germantown: 262-437-7347 Lake Delton/Reedsburg: 608-332-6292
Laser Wellness Center . . . Harnessing the Healing Power of Light
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