Pictures May Help People Stop Smoking
A new study
indicates the simple act of looking at, or thinking of, pictures may be
helpful in stopping cigarette cravings.
Researcher Jon
May, an addiction specialist at Britain's University of Sheffield, told
New Scientist: "Cravings start when we create a little picture in our mind
of what we want. The images are what makes the cravings tantalizing. You
can see in your head what you want, but you can't have it. We tried to
interfere with that process."
The researchers
asked 40 smokers to imagine either sounds, such as a phone ringing, or
images, such as a game of tennis. Half the subjects smoked before the test
while half abstained.
Subjects then
rated their cravings. For abstainers who pictured visual images, cravings
fell away after a minute, and they ended the test with cravings rated as
low as those who had smoked a cigarette. Smoke-free people who thought
of sounds had moderate cravings throughout the experiment.
May presented
the research during the British Association Festival of Science in Salford,
England.
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