Stop Smoking Pills – A Look At Chantix
There’s a new option on the market for smokers wanting to quit. Varenicline is a stop-smoking pill, invented by Pfizer Inc. research chemist Jotham Coe., who happens to be a former 2 1/2 pack-a-day smoker. Pfizer Inc. plans to make this pill available to the public under the brand name, Chantix.
Maybe you’re ready to quit because you want your old fitness level back? Or maybe a smoker who’s scared of becoming another mortality statistic? You are not alone. There are an estimated 32 million smokers would like to quit (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Quitting smoking isn’t easy. On average, only one in 20 smokers can quit without outside help.
Varenicline inhibits the pleasure of smoking and the withdrawal symptoms of quitting. Varenicline acts similarly to nicotine in that it latches on to the same brain receptors as nicotine, which release of dopamine in the pleasure centers of the brain. The drug also slows the release of dopamine, which cuts the craving to smoke that occurs when nicotine’s effect wears off. Most other stop-smoking products involve nicotine-replacement therapies, sold over the counter, and by prescription, in gum, inhaler form, lozenge, nasal spray or patch. Coe describes it as “a shield”, which prevents you from having the lows of withdrawal and the highs of smoking.
Varenicline is the 2nd nicotine-free smoking cessation drug to gain FDA approval. The first is Zyban, an anti-smoking drug, which was initially FDA approved as an antidepressant, under the name of bupropion, but then rebranded. According to Pfizer, clinical trials show the drug’s effect is more pronounced in the short-term: 44% of patients quit smoking after a 12-week Chantix (formerly called Varenicline) treatment, compared to 30% of Zyban patients.
A smoker needs to take this pill is taken 2x a day for at least 12 weeks. This pill only works after it has been taken for a week and a sufficient amount of the drug in his body. Most smokers tend to take Varenicline 10 to 12 weeks longer in order to fully give up smoking. This is because the 12 week period can be doubled, according to the FDA, in patients who successfully stop to increase the likelihood they will remain smoke-free.
Varenicline should only be taken with a doctor’s prescription. Chantix is not to be taken with other stop smoking products, unless by doctor’s instruction. Varenicline’s should not be taken by women who are pregnant or breast-feeding. They can also be harmful for people with a history of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Varenicline’s most common side effect is nausea.
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Stop Smoking Pills – A Look At Bupropion
If you’re a smoker who’s looking to stop, do take time to study the quit-smoking options you have available to you. If you’ve smoked for a long time, you’re about to pull the plug on a chemical dependency. Quite possibly you’ll find it stressful to function as you normally do, without your nicotine-fix.
Statistics suggest that people try to quit smoking up to 10 times before they finally succeed.
You don’t want to be a quitter that keeps switching back and forth between the patch, the gum, the stop-smoking pill or cigarette, and smoking again. One of the best ways to ensure you’re not a quitter who starts again is to find the best treatment for you.
Knowing what’s on the market does not mean you choose the first product you hear about. It’s all about making informed choices so that you do not substitute one addiction with another. Talk to a physician, and ask about the success rate and side-effects of any quit-smoking product you’re thinking of taking. Ask them what they recommend for your particular situation. And be honest. If you’re up to a pack a day, tell your physician this, so that he can make an informed recommendation.
Stop-Smoking Pills are one option for a person who wants to quit smoking but feels they cannot do it cold-turkey. After all, smoking is an addiction, due to the high nicotine content in cigarettes, and it can be a hard addiction to break. They are an alternative to the nicotine patch and nicotine gums on the market.
One stop-smoking pill is Bupropion. Bupropion, commonly known as Zyntabac, contains the active ingredient bupropion hydrochloride. It is a drug which takes care of nicotine in the brain receptors.
These pills target the same receptors in the part of the brain that craves or demands for nicotine. Proponents say that with the quit smoking pill curbs the normal withdrawal effects associated with the cessation of smoking. They claim the pill is recognized as substitute for nicotine by the brain.
The tablets are taken whole (not chewed), eaten with a little water. Treatment usually lasts for about two months (7 to 9 weeks). And if no results are seen by week 6, the smoker should discuss alternative methods with the doctor. The treatment begins with a dose of 1 tablet daily (150 mg) for one week. On the 7th day, the dose is increased to 2 tablets, with at least an eight hour interval. The maximum dose is 2 tablets, and should never be exceeded.
If a smoker chooses take stop-smoking pills, the chances of them working is affected by personal motivation and determination to follow it through responsibly.
This drug should always be taken under medical prescription, and in accordance with the doctor’s guidelines. Consult with a doctor before actually taking this drug. People suffering from eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia,), alcohol-related problems (cirrhosis), or who are undergoing treatment for addiction to alcohol may not take this treatment. It is also not to be taken with anyone with a bipolar disorder, a CNS tumor, or convulsive diseases The most common side effects include: nausea and rash. Other side effects include: dry mouth, excessive sweating, insomnia, tinnitus (ringing in the ear) and tremor.
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How To Maximize On The Help That The Increasingly Popular Stop Smoking Pills Offer
There is no contention about it: that the pills aimed at helping people quit smoking, also called ‘stop smoking pills’ can ease an individual’s battle against the smoking habit considerably. Of course – and contrary to many people’s belief, these pills are not a panacea for smoking problems, and if you don’t use them the way they are supposed to be used, then you may not be able to experience the full benefits they offer, and your attempt to quit smoking may with the pills’ aid may thus not be successful. To maximize on the benefits that these pills offer there are some things you need to do.
Information is power – and the first thing you need to do if you are to maximize on the benefits of the ‘stop smoking pills’ is to understand how the pills work. It is only when you are armed with this kind of information that you will be able to understand what the pills’ role in the battle against the smoking habit is, and what your role in the same battle is supposed to be.
And as it turns out, at least in most cases, the role of the pills in the battle against the smoking habit is simply to help you with the depression that would surely affect you (as part of the withdrawal symptoms) if you attempted to quit smoking unaided. But while the pills help you fight that depression (which, to be sure, can be debilitating in some cases), they typically don’t take away the urge to smoke, and it is therefore up to you to make the decision to stop smoking and commit to it, with the pills only playing a supportive role in the process.
To maximize on the benefits of the pills meant to help you kick your smoking habits, you naturally have to take them as directed. In this regard, it is important to take note that for the most part, these pills aimed at helping you kick the smoking habit are hazardous psychiatric drugs (typically anti-depressants) and deviating from the instructions you are given about using them could either see them fail to be of much help to you at one extreme, or leave you with some terrible long term side effects at the other extreme.
And the fact most of the anti-smoking pills are actually potentially hazardous anti-depressive medications also means that ideally, you might be well advised to seek your physician’s blessings before starting to use them, as there are typically some contra-indications against these pills, which you can only overlook at your peril.
Of course, to maximize on the benefits of the ‘stop smoking pills’ available to you, you need to ensure that you get them from reputable outlets. Cases of counterfeit medications (some of which are nothing more than starch pills) being sold by unscrupulous sellers are not unheard of, and if you get your anti-smoking pills from the wrong types of outlets, you have no one to blame when they turn out to be of absolutely no help to you.
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How The Increasingly Popular ‘Stop Smoking Pills’ Work
Pills meant to help people overcome their smoking addictions, also popularly referred to as ‘stop smoking pills’ have been getting a lot of media coverage in the recent past, as many previous smokers ‘confess’ how the pills helped them overcome smoking habits they had all but given up on the hope of ever overcoming.
Most of the modern ‘stop smoking pills’ are in actual fact anti-depressants, typically formulations of the depression medication pharmaceutically known as Bupropion Hydrochloride (but marketed as Wellbutrin). And as any psychiatrist will tell you, Wellbutrin had been in use for psychiatric treatment for depression alongside a variety of other conditions for quite a number of decades, before it found its newest use – as an anti-smoking pill.
The wisdom of using an anti-depressant as an anti-smoking pill will, of course, not amaze anyone who has tried to quit their smoking habit unaided; as most of the withdrawal symptoms that one experiences whenever they try to quit smoking unaided clearly fall into the range of what are clinically described as ‘depressive’ tendencies. And as many unsuccessful smoking ‘quitters’ have always noted, if a way to overcome the depression which engulfs any smoker who attempts to quit smoking unaided could be found, then the chances of success in quitting smoking would indeed be very high.
On the other hand, as anyone who has ever used Wellbutrin for any other reason will aver, it is a drug that does considerably enhance the user’s sense of wellbeing, offering relief even from some of the darkest incidences of depression – which combined with its relatively fast action makes it just the ideal drug for use in fighting depression induced by an attempt to quit smoking.
To understand how the ‘stop smoking pills’ based on Wellbutrin work at a fundamental level, it would help to have a basic appreciation of what it is that makes people smoke in the first place. And as it turns out, people smoke out of search for short term release from tension – or what psychiatrists and psychologists call ‘reward-seeking’ behavior. This reward seeking behavior is in turn controlled by brain chemicals called dopamine and norepinephrine. And it is the craving for the effect that smoking has on these chemicals that is behind the depressive withdrawal symptoms experienced by smokers attempting to quit the habit. So it is that same effect on those brain chemicals (dopamine and norepinephrine) that smoking has that Wellbutrin simulates to a certain extent, thus at least curing the quitting smokers of the depression that is bound to arise out of any attempt to quit smoking unaided.
It is noteworthy, though, that while the pills meant to help smokers go a long way towards addressing the depression that an attempt to quit smoking unaided would cause, the pills do not take away the urge to ‘light up’ and it is up to the smokers to make the positive decision to stop smoking, with the pills only giving them a ‘helping hand.’
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How People Using Wellbutrin Stop Smoking
It is an incontestable fact: that people using Wellbutrin stop smoking with considerably fewer withdrawal symptoms that people trying to quit smoking unaided.
Of course, for people who have previous knowledge of the drug, the very idea of using Wellbutrin as an aid to people considering kicking their smoking habits might seem rather odd on first hearing about it. But as it actually turns out, a considerable number of the increasingly popular pills meant to help people kick their smoking habits are actually Wellbutrin tablets, Wellbutrin itself being a brand name for Bupronion Hydrochloride, which has for many years been used as an anti-depressant treatment for many years, with a remarkable degree of success.
Of course, the fact that what they are actually using is a psychiatric anti-depressant medication may be off-putting to some of the people looking to kick their smoking habits, and it is therefore no wonder that you will hardly ever find any anti-smoking pill explicitly labeled Wellbutrin: as they typically come in all manner of other more exciting names, while in reality their formulation is still the exact formulation used in making Wellbutrin for psychiatric treatment.
So how do people using Wellbutrin stop smoking with considerable ease?
To answer this question, it is important to first understand what it is that makes quitting smoking so hard. And the answer to this second question is obvious to anyone who has ever attempted to quit smoking: that the considerable withdrawal symptoms one experiences whenever they try to quit smoking is the main reason many people are unable to kick this unhealthy habit, in spite of a sincere desire on their part to do away with it.
And getting deeper into the side effects that people experience whenever they attempt to quit smoking it turns out that it is the depression and mood problems they experience which tend to force them back onto the habit, if only ‘to restore their sanity’ as they normally put it. Smoking is, after all, one of those behaviors psychiatrists refer to as ‘reward-seeking’ behaviors, behaviors whose engagement in causes pleasant (and addictive) changes in brain biochemistry, especially with regard to brain chemicals called Dopamine and Norepinephrine. So when a smoker attempts to stop smoking – meaning that that brain is denied the opportunity to experience the pleasant changes in dopamine and norepinephrine – it ‘throws a tantrum’ which manifests as the depressive symptoms. So what Wellbutrin does it to provide the smoking quitter with some resemblance of the ‘high’ it gets from the pleasant changes in dopamine and norepinephrine whenever he or she smokes (at least for a short time after quitting smoking) thus giving the smoker a soft biochemical landing immediately after quitting smoking, with the intake of Wellbutrin itself being gradually tapered off, so that at the end of it all, the former smoker is both free from their smoking habit and Wellbutrin usage.
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