It is far harder for women smokers to quit…
Than it is for men.
Why is that fair?
[via LiveScience] Women tend to find it harder to quit smoking than men, and a new study suggests why — women’s brains respond differently to nicotine, the researchers say.
When a person smokes, the number of nicotine receptors in the brain — which bind to nicotine and reinforce the habit of smoking — are thought to increase in number.
The study found in men, this is true — male smokers had a greater number of nicotine receptors compared to male nonsmokers. But surprisingly, women smokers had about the same number of nicotine receptors as nonsmokers.
“When you look at it by gender, you see this big difference,” said study researcher Kelly Cosgrove, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. [Read More]
Its not…
Not fair at all.
But given the new science that says that smoking MAY restore tapped out self-control resources…
ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2012) — Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., have found that when they deplete a
smoker’s self control, smoking a cigarette may restore self-control.
The study, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, exposed a test group and a control group — totaling 132 nicotine dependent smokers — to an emotional video depicting environmental damage. One group in the study expressed their natural emotional reactions (no depletion of self-control) while the second group suppressed their responses (self-control depletion). Half of the participants in each group were subsequently allowed to smoke a cigarette. Everyone then was asked to complete a frustrating task that required self-control.
“Our goal was to study whether tobacco smoking affects an individual’s self-control resources,” said lead author Bryan W. Heckman, M.A., a graduate student at the Moffitt Tobacco Research and Intervention Program and the Department of Psychology at the University of South Florida. “We hypothesized that participants who underwent a self-control depletion task would demonstrate less persistence on behavioral tasks requiring self-control as compared to those with self-control intact, when neither group was allowed to smoke. However, we also hypothesized that we would not find this performance decrement among participants who were permitted to smoke.”
The investigators’ hypotheses were supported.
“We found that smoking did have a restorative effect on an individual’s depleted self-control resources,” said Heckman. “Moreover, smoking restored self-control, in part, by improving smokers’ positive mood.” [Read More]
Yeah, OK…
Sure.
The fact that is far hard for women to quit smoking than it is for men?
Understandable now.
Of course, smoking is still very, very bad.
But I totally get it.
Now, ladies…
Quit anyway.
