Happy thoughts could stop your cigarette cravings
Next time you have a craving to light up a cigarette, push that thought out of your head and think happy thoughts! If you think I’m crazy, think again. Recent research is showing that thinking of happy and pleasurable thoughts might help suppress the urge to smoke.
Aa cognitive neuroscientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey ran an experiment on cigarette smokers. He monitored their brain activity when they had a craving to smoke, and asked them too think about specific things. For example, if you close your eyes and imagine yourself on a snowy mountain getting ready to snowboard down a fresh mountain, you are suppressing the brain’s “reward center”, resulting in less of an urge to smoke.
It sounds a little flimsy at first, but it does make some sense. The only reason people are addicted to cigarettes is because their bodies need nicotine. So it beings craving the nicotine so you will put it in your body, and the reward is the relaxed feeling you get after smoking. By suppressing this reward, the body loses the urge to smoke (aside from physical addiction). It’s not perfect, but it’s an interesting study no less.