Question Title: Quit For Life

A friend of mine sent me the link http://www.abliving.com/quit.cfm/76
which is a product called "Quit For Life." Unfortunately, the web site does not give much information about this product, but apparently it is some form of an herbal remedy that they claim cleanses the inside of the body from nicotine to help you quit smoking. Have you ever heard of this and can herbal remedies be an effective way to aid in smoking cessation?

Dear Mary,

The web site you cited today was non-operational today. I searched the entire medical literature (10 million articles!) to see if there are any reports about herbal treatments for smoking cessation and I could not find a single one. So I wouldn't plunk down a penny for an unproven and undocumented herbal treatment at this time. Any treatment which some people believe is going to help them will help some of them. That's known as the placebo effect.

Acupuncture probably does help some smokers to stop. The best-known and most effective way to stop smoking is to have some expert smoking cessation counseling (either on an individual basis or in a group or both) combined with pharmacotherapy (either nicotine replacement therapy or bupropion or a combination of both). One year quit rates may be as high as 50% when smokers are treated aggressively in this fashion. My guess is that the herbal quit rates, if subjected to scrutiny, would not exceed 5%-10%, which is the success rate of smokers who attempt to quit on their own without any help.

For more about smoking cessation, please check out my Ask DrSteve web site:
http://www.drsteve.org

DrSteve

Keywords: smoking cessation, nicotine replacement, bupropion, herbal

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