When smoking your body and brain get used to receiving nicotine and they become addicted. The problem when quitting is that although you want to stop smoking your organism will continue to ask for nicotine. Then it’s when the withdrawal symptoms set in, causing cravings. This is the reason why quitting is so hard for the most of us.
Fortunately for us, today there are all sort of treatments for the smokers who want to quit. One of the most used methods at the moment is the quit smoking patch.
What is a Quit Smoking Patch
The quit smoking patch is a small, self-adhesive patch that is used when wanting to stop smoking. It is a form of therapeutic nicotine that you have to stick it to your skin in order for it to work. When attached to the skin nicotine will enter your bloodstream at a constant rate, during a period of 24 hours. The quit smoking patch works as an aid that is meant to help you quit smoking by reducing nicotine craving symptoms, until you are completely cured and don’t need to smoke anymore.
The quit smoking patch comes in different strengths and sizes. When you start the quitting process it is usually best to first start with the strongest patch and then slowly go from one to another, until you get to the weakest one available. And after a while you will completely stop to use any kind of quit smoking patch. Then the process will end.
Advantages and Disadvantages of using the Quit Smoking Patch
The advantages of using the quit smoking patch, or the nicotine patch as it is sometimes called, is that it provides your body and brain with a constant supply of nicotine, without you having to think about it all the time. This way it also helps you slowly forget about the smoking habit, because you won’t feel the need to do it any more.
The disadvantages of using the quit smoking patch is that they can provoke different irritations to the skin and they are pretty expensive, although if you consider the money that you would spend on cigars they don’t look so expensive anymore. It is also believed that the quit smoking patch causes the person wearing it to have strange dreams if it goes to bed with the patch on. Unfortunately if you don’t wear it during sleep, the next day when you wake up you will probably feel the need to smoke or you would feel agitated, and it would take some time before the new patch will start working.
But the biggest disadvantage that the quit smoking patch has is that if you smoke while having it put on or just shortly after removing it, you could suffer nicotine overdose, which can even lead to death. That is why you should be very careful when using the quit smoking patch.