Addiction Solution Source

This information about smokers cravings was recently released from Duke University:

Brain scans of smokers studied by the researchers revealed three specific regions deep within the brain that appear to control dependence on nicotine and craving for cigarettes. These regions play important roles in some of the key motivations for smoking: to calm down when stressed, to achieve pleasure and to help concentration.

“If you can’t calm down, can’t derive pleasure and can’t control yourself or concentrate, then it will be extremely difficult for you to break the habit,” said lead study investigator Jed E. Rose, Ph.D., director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research. “These brain regions may explain why most people try to quit several times before they are successful.”

In this study, the researchers manipulated the levels of nicotine dependence and cigarette craving among 15 smokers and then scanned their brains using positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to see which areas of the brain were most active.

Three Regions of the Brain are Important for Smokers

Three specific regions of the brain demonstrated changes in activity when the smokers craved cigarettes versus when they did not.

One region that lights up, called the thalamus, is considered to be the key relay point for sensory information flowing into the brain. Some of the symptoms of withdrawal among people trying to quit stem from the inability to focus thoughts and the feeling of being overwhelmed, and could thus be explained by changes in this region, according to the researchers. The researchers found that changes in this region were most dramatic among those who said they smoked to calm down when under stress.

Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., author of The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program, has a 7 Step plan as an addiction treatment solution. The main focus is on eating "slow" carbs that contain whole grains and a lot of fiber along with protein in 3 regular meals a day.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, a federal agency that is part of the National Institutes of Health, issued 13 principles of effective treatment for drug addiction in 1999. These principles call for the treatment of the whole person:

1. No single treatment is appropriate for all individuals.

2. Treatment needs to be readily available.

3. Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug use.

4. An individual’s treatment and services plan must be assessed continually and modified as necessary to ensure that the plan meets the person’s changing needs.

5. Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical for treatment effectiveness.

6. Individual or group counseling and other behavioral therapies are critical components of effective treatment for addiction.

Toxic substances such as prescription drugs, street drugs and recreational drugs causes our body to become acidic and out of balance which can lead to disease.

To help your body return to a more ideal state, increase your intake of alkaline-forming foods and reduce the intake of acid-forming foods.

Acid-forming foods (examples):

• Sugar (soft drinks)
• Meat (beef, chicken, fish)
• Dairy products (milk, cheese, ice cream)
• Most grains (wheat, oats, corn, rice and their flours)
• Coffee
• Alcohol
• Peanuts
• Chocolate 
• Corn Oil

Alkaline-forming foods (examples):

This website offers addiction treatment alternatives to the conventional counseling and 12 Step programs. Research shows that these conventional programs have low success rates for the long term.