It can be tough for long time smokers to refuse a cigarette (U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons)

(Photo: U.S. Air Force)

If your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking, you might want to consider what scientists in England have learned.  According to their study published in  Addiction, smokers who want to kick the habit are better off seeking the help of a trained advisor, rather than doing it themselves.

The researchers found self-help aids such as nicotine patches, gum or other products, do not improve the chances of quitting smoking. They used data from the “Smoking Toolkit Study,” a large ongoing research project that’s been conducted since 2007. The UK project follows current smokers as well as those who recently quit smoking.

The researchers wanted to find out which smoking cessation methods were the most successful. So, they analyzed the responses to survey questions answered by more than 10,000 Britons who had tried to stop smoking over the prior year.

The results showed that smokers who use services provided by smoking cessation advisors, often offered by health care organizations, have the best chance of successfully kicking their smoking habit.

The study also points out that over-the-counter therapies, such as the nicotine patches and gum, alone might not be as beneficial as they may think.

Those who try to quit smoking using a combination of specialized behavioral support, along with anti-smoking medicine or nicotine replacement products, are three times more likely to be successful than those who try to stop smoking on their own.

Health experts say smoking can be hazardous to your health (CDC via Wikipedia Commons)

(Graphic: CDC via Wikipedia Commons)

In fact, the researchers found that smokers who only use over-the-counter smoking cessation aids, without the help of a trained advisors, have the same rate of success as those who didn’t use any of those quit-smoking products at all.

“When you think that stopping smoking saves six hours of life for every day of smoking avoided, investing an hour or two over a 6 week period to see…[a] stop smoking advisor seems like a good investment,” said Robert West from University College London, who led the team of researchers. “They can provide cheaper medicine than is available in shops and advise how to use it properly. It’s crazy that not all smokers who want to stop do it. As far as nicotine products bought from shops are concerned, there is an urgent need to understand what is going on because we know that if these products are used properly, they can be effective.”