Can You REALLY Give Up Smoking Using Quit Smoking Laser Therapy?

Smoking is a nasty habit, injurious to your health, extremely costly, anti social and more and more is becoming socially unacceptable. Other people don't want to breathe your smoke, don't want the smell on their clothes and don't like the possible health effects of close contact with smokers.

All good reasons to give up smoking. Not to mention lung cancer, emphysemsa, other cancers and a stack of well proven smoking related diseases, all scary.

But it's not at all easy to give up smoking, as just about anyone who has tried it will tell you if you haven't yet tried it yourself.

There is now a growing movement amongst smokers to quit smoking. And there are a large range of methods you can choose to assist you in your quest to be free of the cigarettes. Some of these quit smoking methods are extremely successful. None are successful for everybody, it mostly comes down to how motivated you are to quit smoking.

And there are some methods of quitting smoking that are less mainstream and perhaps less likely to succeed. But as there is big money to be made in anti smoking therapies there are those who will promote quit smoking methods regardless of how well they work.

One of the new kids on the block of quit smoking options if quit smoking laser therapy. Otherwise known as low level laser therapy to stop smoking. It has been around for more than a decade, but there is still raging debate about how effective it is.

The principle behind low level laser as an anti smoking measure is this. An extremely low powered laser beam is applied to some of the body's acupuncture points. The laser therapy, it is said, works by stimulating the nerve endings in these acupuncture points, and this stimulation produces endorphins which help relieve the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. And if the symptoms of withdrawal are reduced or removed, so the argument goes, it's easy to stop.

But the question remains, does quit smoking laser therapy actually work?

There are many who claim it does of course, they usually run quit smoking laser treatment centers. They claim that there is medical evidence that it works to support it's efficacy. However the author has not seen any solid scientifically based studies to support any claim that laser therapy to stop smoking actually works.

On some of the websites of the laser therapy companies there are claims of medical evidence, but these claims do not include links to actual published studies in support of the so called evidence.

Even on one of the websites of a laser treatment company the laser procedure is described as "experimental".

But there are plenty who say that the claims of the laser companies amount to a fraud on the public. That laser treatment for the relief of smoking has never been scientifically proven to work, and that it is a fraud.

Public Citizen, (a consumer group) for example, petitioned the FDA in 2006 to try and stop the practices of laser companies claiming that quit smoking laser therapies were proven to work. And there are lots of other places where you can read about the claims of many that stop smoking laser treatments are the new snake oil.

For that reason I have set up a website looking at quit smoking laser therapy called the Quit Smoking Laser Therapy Guide. On it I examine some of the claims of the laser companies and also see if there actually is any evidence that laser to quit smoking works. I don't offer any opinion one way or the other as I haven't seen enough evidence one way or the other, but I provide an outlet for those seeking to use laser therapy to stop smoking to read about some of the issues.

And most importantly where people who have already undergone laser therapy to help them kick the cigarette habit to leave feedback on how the experience went, good or bad.

Here'a few of the articles that I have found about stop smoking laser therapy.So far none of them too supportive of laser as a good anti smoking treatment. However I am happy to publish evidence either way and if anyone shows me evidence in support of laser treatment I am happy to publish that too. Just let me know where to find it.

Some of the papers on laser are pretty damning, some describing it as a fraud and some as the latest snake oil with no basis in medical proof. Read the papers yourself and make up your own mind.