Nicotine

Why Is It So Hard to Quit Smoking?

Mark Twain said, «Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.» Maybe you’ve tried to quit, too. Why is quitting and staying quit hard for so many people? The answer is nicotine.

Nicotine

Nicotine is a drug found naturally in tobacco. It is highly addictive — as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Over time, a person becomes physically and emotionally addicted to, or dependent on, nicotine. Studies have shown that smokers must deal with both the physical and psychological dependence to be successful at quitting and staying quit.

Smoking is expensive. It isn’t hard to figure out how much you spend on smoking: multiply how much money you spend on tobacco every day by 365 (days per year). The amount may surprise you. Now multiply that by the number of years you have been using tobacco and that amount will probably shock you.

Where Nicotine Goes and How Long it Stays.

The Mayo Clinic is a world renowned medical institution based in Rochester, Minnesota, in the United States. The medical practice holds both hospital facilities as well as a medical school. The formation of the Clinic was started in Rochester in the late 1800s when Dr. William Mayo settled there. Since then, Mayo has created additional hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona. There are a number of smaller clinics and hospitals in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin as well. These smaller clinics, along with the largest facility in Rochester, make up the Mayo Health System.

Another way in which Mayo is able to focus more attention on the patients is in how physicians are paid. Instead of the common procedure of pay based on how many patients are seen in a day, physicians at the Clinic are paid a salary that is not affected by patient volume. This allows doctors to spend as much time as they require with patients to provide an exceptional level of care. It also prevents doctors from performing unnecessary procedures or operations in hopes of more financial incentives. This could be why the Mayo Clinic is known for finding diseases that are missed by doctors at other health care systems.