ASH “concerns” about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Aug 8

ASH “concerns” about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Posted in News

(I originally added this as an edit to the end of my previous post on the Close Up feature on hypnotherapy for smoking cessation, but I’m moving it to its own post for the benefit of my subscribers.)

As a follow-up, I see that ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) have come out expressing “concerns” about the Close Up feature on hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. Their concerns are twofold: firstly, that the success rate of 65% was exaggerated, and secondly, that people would spend a lot of money giving up via hypnotherapy when subsidised nicotine replacement therapy is available much more cheaply.

Concerning their first point, they cite a recent study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research which found a 12-month cessation rate of 20% for hypnotherapy (versus 14% for behavioral counselling). What they don’t mention is that in this study, as well as hypnotherapy for one group and behavioral therapy for the other, nicotine patches were also used for all participants.

Also, they’re not comparing apples with apples. Methods of hypnotherapy vary widely, and not all are equally effective. I don’t know what methods the doctor on the Close Up programme uses in his three sessions, or what methods the experimenters in this study used in their two sessions (unfortunately the journal concerned is one of those that doesn’t make its most recent issues available online, even to academic institutions, so I can’t use my student login to Massey University Library to get the details).

Regarding ASH’s second concern, I obviously have a biased sample, since by the nature of the case the people who come to me to give up smoking by hypnotherapy don’t include any people who have successfully and permanently given up smoking by nicotine replacement therapy. I only see the ones who have tried it and found it ineffective for them, or who don’t want to use a drug to help them give up using a drug. But there are plenty of people in both camps.

Most people who seriously want to stop smoking are not unaware of NRT, in my experience. Many have tried it and found it doesn’t work for them – particularly those who don’t smoke heavily. Patches contain a lot of nicotine and the dose is often too strong for a light smoker. I have even had a client tell me that he gave up briefly with NRT and when he went back to smoking he smoked more, because he’d got used to a higher level of nicotine in his system.

Other people think (quite rightly, in my view) that the basic idea of NRT is flawed, that nicotine is a major part of the problem and so nicotine (even in a different, less harmful form) is not the solution.

It’s going to be interesting when I go on the Heart Foundation smoking cessation practitioner course later this month. NRT is key to their approach, though obviously not the whole of it or I wouldn’t be going on the training – I’m hoping to learn things which I can apply to helping my clients who don’t want to use NRT, or have found it ineffective. I think a multimodal approach is best, which is why I don’t just use hypnotherapy in my sessions.

NOTE: Having gone on the course, I’ve now moderated my position, as mentioned in my more recent post on Nicotine Replacement Therapy. I now consider NRT a legitimate and important part of a multimodal approach to helping people stop smoking.

Some of the struck-through material above is simply incorrect. Nicotine patches do not contain very much nicotine compared with a cigarette. A cigarette, smoked with dedication, can deliver up to 7mg of nicotine in a few minutes. Even the heaviest nicotine patches don’t deliver more than 1mg an hour, which is about the rate that the body naturally clears it. If someone has found NRT ineffective it is much more likely that they had too little (and confused the withdrawal symptoms with effects of the NRT) than that they had too much. The way to tell the difference is that overdosing on NRT causes nausea.

You can get more detailed information in my free ebook, How to Stop Smoking.

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