Smokers on campus will have a chance to get support from the Student Health Center Thursday to kick the habit and learn more about side effects from quitting.
The national campaign, dubbed the “Great American Smokeout,” is held every year on the third Thursday of November. This year’s events will be held in the Union Ouachita room, where students, faculty and staff are welcome to learn more about possible positive and negative consequences of giving up cigarettes.
Kim Munroe, Student Health Center coordinator, said the health center wants to take an active part at the University to help people quit smoking, because the earlier they quit, the better off they are.
“The average number of quit attempts is six, and people often get discouraged,” Munroe said. “It does take work because it’s an addiction and you have to keep at it.”
She said the campaign has expanded this year to provide more specialized informational sessions to appeal to more people who may want to quit for different reasons.
“Not all people have the same concerns,” Munroe said. “Some of them want to know more about rituals and habits, and others are more concerned about weight gain. This way, they can pick and choose more areas and they can spend 20 minutes in one session rather than an hour.”
Autumn Douglas, Student Health Center nutrition specialist, will lead a session on potential weight gain after quitting and how people can prevent it.
“Sometimes people substitute food for smoking to have something to do with their hands, or they eat more because their taste sensations come back once they quit,” Douglas said. “Having taste back is a good thing, but then there is the tendency to overeat.”
She said this topic is a concern because society and peer pressure expect people, especially women, to be thin.
Average weight gain in the rst few weeks of cessation, the process of quitting, is about 7 pounds, but only 25 percent actually gain anything.
“It’s a possibility, but that may be a small price to pay for preventing lung cancer and other ramications of smoking,” Douglas said.
Munroe said smokers are in different stages of quitting and deciding to quit is all about having a plan.
David Hayes, a Student Health Center psychologist, will be giving a session on how to deal with stress in other ways instead of turning to nicotine. He said people react to certain triggers that make them want nicotine.
“I’ll be talking about hypnosis and certain triggers that will help smokers to stop,” Hayes said.
He said the trick to the hypnosis technique is understanding that if someone can smoke three more cigarettes each week, they also can smoke three fewer cigarettes.
“It has to be a combination of hypnosis and wanting to quit,” he said. “There isn’t any magic answer. It requires new stress management techniques and support from friends and family to help their endeavors to be healthy.”
He said college students who think they are young and can afford to be unhealthy now should reconsider the lifestyle they are developing.
“[Smoking] becomes part of their personality and it comes to the point when they think they need a cigarette when they’re stressed out,” Hayes said. “The future’s yours. They’ve got their entire lives ahead of them, and it all depends on the kind of life you want to lead.”