Smoking affects many thousands of people and this habit causes more than ½ million American deaths yearly from conditions and illnesses related to smoking.
Smoking causes damage to the digestive system, circulatory system, pulmonary system which eventually leads to emphysema, heart disease, strokes, short breath, lung cancer and higher risk of heart attack.
Life threatening health issues such as these influence a lot of people to search for ways to help them quit the habit, such as medication, laser treatments, patches, gum, acupressure, magnets, and medical smoking retreats.
Medical smoking retreats offer psychological retraining, assistance and support during the first few days of treatment when nicotine withdrawal occurs.
These retreats have medical personnel onsite who can make use of acupressure, acupuncture and many other medical techniques.
Acupuncture has to be administered by licensed practitioners using sterile needles to avoid infections developing.
Both acupressure and acupuncture have been used by the Chinese for centuries to alleviate discomfort, pain and to change body energy levels to help healing.
Research shows that acupressure and acupuncture help smokers to experience less painful nicotine withdrawal effects.
Medical smoking retreats also use a technique called hypnosis and aversion therapy which addresses psychological and social issues that are common with smoking addictions.
Aversion therapy teaches recent non-smokers to feel revulsion and negative feelings whenever they think of cigarettes - it achieves results through a number of techniques.
Hypnosis helps recent non-smokers, from a subconscious level, to cope with nicotine withdrawal and ensconces emotions of disgust when they consider cigarettes.
These retreats use biofeedback techniques as well to teach coping and stress reduction methods to help recent non-smokers deal with the social situations that would usually involve smoking.
Biofeedback also ensures that aversion therapy is more fully incorporated.
Some of the retreats use nicotine gums, medications, patches and laser treatments and different clinics will use different methods for example some are held over weekends or even a few days while others may hold sessions over three to five evenings per week in order to assist the smoker through a normal day.
When considering a medical smoking retreat, always make sure you clear your medical status with your doctor first by providing your doctor with information regarding all potential therapies to be used so that he or she can make an informed decision according to your current medical status on what would best suite your personal needs.