When trying to quit smoking, health experts and smokers alike have long debated the effectiveness of slowly smoking fewer and fewer cigarettes versus going cold turkey.
According to a study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, those who quit cold turkey are more likely to have success than those who slowly try to phase out their habit.
Discovering how to quit smoking
To reach their findings, the study team recruited nearly 700 smokers who wanted to stop smoking.
“They were split into two groups. One group — the ‘abrupt cessation’ group — set a quit day and stopped all smoking on that day. The second group — the ‘gradual cessation’ group — set a quit day but gradually reduced their tobacco use in the two weeks leading up to that date,” Nicola Lindson-Hawley, an addiction specialist from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said in a press release rom the university.
“Both groups had advice and support and access to nicotine patches and nicotine replacement therapy, like nicotine gum or mouth spray,” she added.
After quitting, participants were evaluated weekly for the next four weeks and then again after six months. Along with asking them how they were doing, the scientists assessed the quantity of carbon monoxide they were exhaling, an objective way to check if people were staying with their quitting plan.
At four weeks, 39 percent of the gradual group hadn’t smoked, as opposed to 49 percent of the cold turkey group, meaning that the cold turkey group was 25 percent more successful. The difference between the groups started on the first day, when more of the cold turkey group tried to quit as opposed to the gradual group.
“The difference in quit attempts seemed to arise because people struggled to cut down,” Lindson-Hawley said “It provided them with an extra thing to do, which may have put them off quitting altogether.
“If people actually made a quit attempt then the success rate was equal across groups,” she continued. “We also found that more people preferred the idea of quitting gradually than abruptly; however regardless of what they thought they were still more likely to quit in the abrupt group.”
The Oxford expert also said it is important to note the study included in people who wanted to quit soon, were getting counseling support and using nicotine replacement therapy.
“For these people the best advice appears to be to pick a day and stop smoking completely on that day,” Lindson-Hawley said. “However, as we found that at the start of the study many people cannot imagine being able to stop completely. For these people it is much better to attempt to cut down their smoking than do nothing at all and we should increase support for gradual cessation to increase their chances of succeeding.”
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