Tips to Help You Quit Smoking

by Kim Olson, tobacco treatment specialist for INTEGRIS

Quitting smoking can be one of the most difficult things you can do. Kim Olson, the tobacco treatment specialist for INTEGRIS, shares several tips and techniques that can make the switch from a smoker to a non-smoker an easier transition.

Hi. I'm Kim Olson, the tobacco treatment specialist for INTEGRIS Health. Today, I want to talk to you just briefly about making a quit smoking attempt.

If you are thinking about quitting smoking, there are a couple of tips that I want to share with you today.

One of those is to start thinking about what you want your quit date to be. Ideally, it would be a date that has some significance to you. It could be a birthday, an anniversary, a child's birthday, or a special significant date just to you personally. So think about that. Ideally, it would be two to three weeks out from the date that you actually want to quit.

The next thing you want to do is actually remove all tobacco products from your home. The closer it gets to your quit date, you want to start eliminating all of those products so you're not tempted to continue to try and use those.

Another thing that's helpful for a lot of smokers is to begin tapering their tobacco use. So if you smoke a pack a day, decrease that every week by one cigarette or two cigarettes per day until you're down to about a half a pack. And then you'll be closer to being more successful on your quit date when you put that half a pack away.

Another thing that's very helpful for people that are trying to quit are medications. I would recommend that you visit with your physician about which of those medications are appropriate for you. There are seven FDA approved medications that you can use by themselves or some in combination to help with your withdrawal symptoms as well.

We also refer our patients and people that we work with in the community to the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline. That is 1-800-QUIT-NOW. If you would like more information on how to make a quit attempt or to obtain these tips, please contact us at 888-951-2277.