Quitting smoking makes people happier – study
Stubbing out the cigarettes has also been found to make you happier as well as improve physical health
Many smokers reach for a cigarette to help ease their anxiety during stressful periods.
However, American researchers have found that quitting smoking makes people happier, and the effect lasts for as long as they manage to kick the habit.
The team from Brown University and the University of Southern California said it showed quitting is not, as many smokers fear, a psychological sacrifice made for the sake of their physical health.
Study author Professor Christopher Kahler from Brown, said: ‘If people quit smoking their depressive symptoms go down and if they relapse, their mood goes back to where they were.
‘An effective antidepressant should look like that.’
The researchers studied a group of 236 men and women who were trying to quit the habit. They received nicotine patches and counselling and agreed to a quit date.
Then were then tested for depressive symptoms a week before the quit date and then two, eight, 16 and 28 weeks after that date.
Nearly half of the subjects, who never managed to abstain from smoking, remained the unhappiest throughout the study.
A fifth only quit up to the two-week assessment while around one in six managed to stay off cigarettes until the eight-week assessment and the same proportion kicked the habit for the whole study.
The scientists found those who quit and stuck with abstinence were the happiest to begin with, and this elevated mood remained constant throughout.
Those who quit temporarily were happy while they were not smoking, but their mood darkened significantly when they gave into temptation.
Professor Kahler said: ‘The assumption has been that people might smoke because it has antidepressant properties and that if they quit it might unmask a depressive episode.
‘What’s surprising it that at the time when you measure smokers’ mood, even if they’ve only succeeded for a little while, they are already reporting less symptoms of depression.’
Professor Kahler said he was confident the results apply to most people, even though the smokers in this study were also heavy drinkers.
He said the results correlated well with a study he did in 2002 of smokers who all had had past episodes of depression but who did not necessarily drink.
He added that the changes in happiness measured in this study did not correlate in time with a reduction in drinking among some participants.
The team concluded that even if some people report using tobacco to ease stress and boost their mood, it is likely to have the opposite effect.
SOURCE: dailymail.co.uk
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