Smoking: Stop the Awful Habit

The one thing that could be extremely necessary on behalf of smokers who are ruining their health via continually smoking is to consider utilizing stop smoking patches as a method of giving up smoking. We all know that smoking is the primary cause of cancer and that it will severely damage the situation of your lungs. Several smokers start lighting up while still in their teenager years, the long term results of smoking might be really dreadful for them.

Commonly, it takes an individual who smokes more or less ten years to realize that they’re ruining their health every instance that they smoke. In addition, the damage done to their system may mostly be permanent plus smoking likewise damages a person’s appearance and cuts short their existence by a couple of years. Cigarettes include nicotine that can be really addictive, which is why giving up the smoking habit might be really hard, nevertheless doable.

Your mind as well as your physique would turn out to be accustomed to receiving nicotine and therefore once you attempt to quit smoking they are going to resist and not allow you to be successful. However, along with the help of give up smoking patches, the process of giving up the addiction may begin gradually after the body and brain turn out to be attuned to getting gradually lesser quantities of nicotine; therefore, quitting the problem becomes so much easier.

Stop smoking patches assist in ensuring achieving lowering the individual smoker’s craving for another cigarette. Moreover, the more known patches are even able to make sure better and more effectual results. They are going to, like for instance, assist to lower longing for nicotine via injecting the system with restricted amounts of uncontaminated nicotine that makes the individual who smokes grow to be accustomed to lessened nicotine intake.

Gradually, the lowered quantities of nicotine entering the body (by method of the patch) would make it simpler for the individual who smokes to endure with less nicotine intake. Moreover, almost immediately after the cravings for nicotine begin decreasing, the smoker can be capable to absolutely endure without it. That is how over a period of time and with continuous application of quit smoking patches, smokers are in a place to break free of smoking.

There are actually various patches which can be solely effectual in helping a person who smokes to reduce the numbers of cigarettes smoked on each day. Others may help in making a smoker get rid of the smoking habit/addiction once and for all.

So long as a person learns that smoking is a harmful dependency and that persevering with smoking can shorten their lives and wreck their health, there may be faith for the smoker who might attempt utilizing stop smoking patches so as to discover how to by no means smoke another cigarette. Living a life by which a person only inhales clean and fresh air is worth living; the smoking habit and its connected perils is not going to do someone any good.  That is the reason why it does pay to try each and every trick doable to quit the smoking habit.

In my opinion, having the discipline to quit smoking cold turkey is the more courageous and self-gratifying route, showing heroic efforts in will power, which is a huge rewarding character trait.

Nevertheless, below are some tips for quitting from smoking:

• Deem that you can quit. Think about some of the most difficult things which you have done in your life and realize that you have the fortitude and determination to quit smoking.
• Then, write your own plan modified to your personality and way of doing things. Create your own plan for quitting.
• Write the benefits of quitting like live longer, feel better, for your family, save money, smell better, find a mate more easily, etc. Also, write why you quit from this. You know what's bad about smoking and you know what you'll get by quitting. Put it on paper and read it daily.
• To support your decision to quit, ask your family and friends. Let them know ahead of time that you will probably be short-tempered and even irrational while you withdraw from your smoking habit.
• Set a quit date. Decide the day when you will stub out from your smoking forever. Plan for it. Prepare your mind for the "first day of the rest of your life". Also, you can hold small ceremony when you smoke last time.
• For quitting talk to your doctor for Support and guidance. It is a proven way to better your chances to quit.
• Start an exercise program. Exercise is simply mismatched with smoking. Exercise relieves stress and helps your body recover from years of damage from cigarettes. Slowly start it with a short walk once or twice per day. Then, Build up to 30 to 40 minutes of rigorous activity, 3 or 4 times per week. Discuss with your physician before beginning any exercise program.
• For 3 to 5 minutes, do some deep breathing each day. Breathe in through your nose very slowly, hold the breath for a few seconds, and exhale very slowly through your mouth.
• Imagine your way to becoming a non-smoker. While doing your deep breathing, you can close your eyes and begin to imagine yourself as a non-smoker.
• See manually turning down a cigarette that someone offers you. See yourself throwing all your cigarettes away, and winning a gold medal for doing so.
• Cut back on cigarettes gradually. Plan how many cigarettes you will smoke each day until your quit date, making the number you smoke smaller each day; buy only one pack at a time; change brands so you don't enjoy smoking as much.
• Find another smoker who is trying to quit, and help each other with positive words and by lending an ear when quitting becomes difficult.
• Your teeth have been cleaned after quitting smoking. Enjoy the way your teeth look and feel and plan to keep them that way. 
• Drink lots of water. Water is good for you anyway, and most people don't get enough. It will help flush the nicotine and other chemicals out of your bodyKeep a picture of your family or someone very important to you with you at all times. On a piece of paper, write the words "I'm quitting for myself and for you. Tape your written message to the picture. Whenever you have the urge to smoke, look at the picture and read the message.

Smokers' Lungs

Images that detail the progression of smokers' lungs

 

Michael O. Johnson, CEO of Herbalife International

Michael O. Johnson embodies the lifestyle that his company sells. The 56-year-old CEO of Herbalife International of America Inc. is an avid endurance sport athlete, and when he’s not participating in a triathlon, Johnson is working to make Herbalife a healthier enterprise. Since coming on board in 2003, Johnson has taken over the $4 billion company public, managed a major debt offering, conducted a secondary offering and refinanced the capital structure.

Prior to taking on the role in Herbalife as CEO in 2003 Michael spent 17 years with The Walt Disney Co., most recently as President of Walt Disney International. He served as President of Asia Pacific for Disney and as President of Beuna Vista Home Entertainment.

Previously Mr. Johnson served as publisher of Audio Times magazine and directed the regional sales for Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment including for 3 of its television channels, MTV, Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel.

Mr. Johnson is also a competitive Triathlete. Mr. Johnson has brought the current doctors on board as well as set up the sports sponsorships seen worldwide on television and media every day.

Michael O. Johnson spoke with Smart Business about his changing view on business leadership, the value of experience and problem with charisma.

Develop your vision. We just put together a vision, mission and values for our company. We rolled this out as a program worldwide. Senior management became trainers of this. It’s almost like the Ten Commandments. They become an operating methodology for the company. We do the right, honest and ethical thing. We make decisions in our work based on facts, not on hearsay. We work hard and hold ourselves accountable. We strive for excellence. That’s part of our value system.

We apply facts. It’s good to have guts, but you need to go back and look at ‘How are we making this decision?’ Everything comes back, eventually, to the core principles of what we have out there.

Trust your gut. I used to think leadership was 50 percent fraternal — getting people to work with you and for you and seeing the vision — and 50 percent technical — some strong skill that you have and applying it to the market. In today’s world, there is a third piece of leadership — guts, an instinct for where you are in a situation with somebody, when to apply pressure, when not to apply pressure, to have a feel for the meeting. What is that person’s mental makeup for the day? Sometimes you have to talk people off the ledge. And you don’t want to be pushing when you’re trying to pull them in.

Lead with wisdom. There’s an instinctual part of what I’m learning in life, and especially business, that is … wisdom. You get it over time. There are some great young leaders, but they have some way that they operate that’s very standardized. As you get a little older, wisdom plays a part of it. And wisdom is guts.

Don’t mistake charisma for leadership. We mistake charisma for guts sometimes. People are drawn to (some executives), but they may not be drawn to something in depth. They might be drawn to something that is slightly shallow. It might be looks. People are biologically drawn to each other by looks or voice or style or clothes. Someone who has a little depth, someone who has been around the block a few times, has a much more powerful presence than someone who just has presence.

Deal with your weaknesses. This is a cliche', but it is a strong one: Hire strength to your weakness. It’s something that I’ve employed all my career that has worked out pretty well for me. Time will be the real judge of it. I didn’t come up through finance or accounting. Had I known what I know now, I’d have gotten a finance degree. Numbers are the core of any business.

I’ve self-educated myself over the years to be as articulate as I possibly can be about financial matters. But this is a world of high finance, especially as companies get larger and get involved in foreign markets and debt markets.

Know the rules. The public company sector in today’s world requires a massive amount of reporting in a massive amount of areas. Areas that you wouldn’t think have public scrutiny now have a major amount of public scrutiny.

Shareholders have a right, and it’s a good right, to know everything about a company. In the past, as a somewhat private company, we didn’t have to have a mass of people doing quarterly accounting for us. We do now. We didn’t have to have ‘Qs and Ks and 8-Ks’ going out every time we sneezed. We didn’t have to be as thoughtful about every statement we made to everybody about everything.

Give back to the community. I’m over that halfway point in life. At some point, you’ve got to start giving back. The sense of the founder of this company was to give back. Even at a young age, he put into place our family foundation with the idea of giving back.

I’m going to measure success in this company on a lot of things. Of course, they’re going to be financial and have Wall Street metrics to them without a doubt. The real success we’re going to have is when people look at the Herbalife brand and don’t have any suspicions. They’re going to say, great products, great people, great company, great community service.

Nobody owns the nutrition brand. … I want to own it. We want to own the idea that the mission of nutrition is Herbalife.

Learn from the past. Don’t discount any of your experiences. I am constantly amazed how every experience I’ve had in life — I’ve been a paperboy, cut lawns, shoveled snow, ran a restaurant, a disc jockey, worked in the entertainment industry, published a magazine.

There were points in my life when I thought I was not on the road to success. I didn’t have one of these undergraduate, graduate, Wharton MBA to become the CEO. I didn’t have that track. I had a much less typical track.

The more I found out, the more leaders I encounter, most of them did have pretty untypical tracks. There is a misnomer that there is some planned ascension program for people. Take every experience, gather it in and try and find some horizon point on it.

Don’t give up. When you’re working your butt off and toiling away up through some management rank that may be middle management, and you don’t think there’s any big picture beyond it, don’t be so sure that there’s not. Every experience adds value to who you are.

Keep it simple. What’s lacking in business today is simplicity. People are striving to make things complicated when people should be striving to make things simple. Let’s stop impressing people with all the information we have, and let’s get down to the essential points. Then let’s let communication add the things that we’re missing.

We confuse things. We make simple things confusing. Business is not that complicated. It’s usually a product, a process and a consumer.

Food Addiction: Similarities to Drug Stimulants

Let’s examine the research and the similarities between high-sugar, energy-dense, fatty-salty, processed, and junk food with the likes of cocaine, heroin, and nicotine. Here are some of the scientific findings confirming that food can, indeed, be addictive:

1. Sugar stimulates the brain’s reward centers through the neurotransmitter dopamine exactly like other addictive drugs.
2. Brain imagining (PET scans) shows that high-sugar and high-fat foods work just like heroin, opium, or morphine in the brain.
3. Brain imaging (PET scans) shows that obese people and drug addicts have lower numbers of dopamine receptors, making them more likely to crave things that boost dopamine.
4. Foods high in fat and sweets stimulate the release of the body’s own opioid (chemical like morphine) in the brain.
5. Drugs we use to block the brain’s receptors for heroin and morphine (naltrexone) also reduce the consumption and preference for sweet, high-fat foods in both normal weight and obese binge eaters.
6. People (and rats) develop a tolerance to sugar—they need more and more of the substance to satisfy themselves—just like they do for drugs of abuse like alcohol or heroin.
7. Obese individuals continue to eat large amounts of unhealthy foods despite severe social and personal negative consequences, just like addicts or alcoholics.
8. Animals and humans experience “withdrawal” when suddenly cut off from sugar, just like addicts detoxifying from drugs.
9. Just like drugs, after an initial period of “enjoyment” of the food the user no longer consumes them to get high, but to feel normal.

Remember the documentary Super Size Me, where Morgan Spurlock ate three meals a day at McDonald's for 30 straight days in a row? He would super-size the meals when the cashier asked. What struck me about that film was not that he gained 24 1/2 pounds with a 13% body mass increase or that his cholesterol went up, or even that he got a fatty liver. What was surprising was the portrait it painted of the addictive quality of the food he ate. At the beginning of the movie, when he ate his first super-sized meal, he threw it up, just like a teenager who drinks too much alcohol at his first party. By the end of the movie, he only felt “well” when he ate that junk food. The rest of the time he felt depressed, exhausted, anxious, and irritable and lost his sex drive, just like an addict or smoker withdrawing from his drug. The food was clearly addictive.