Cigarettes - light 'em if you got 'em
Well, I can’t talk about nutrition without discussing cigarettes. Remember, the doctor license? But hold on, I’m going to say something you likely will not have heard from your other doctors. Don’t quit. Yep, you read that correct.
Don't quit cigarettes? Really Dr. Dan?
I’ll explain. Cigarettes are not the problem, they are the solution to the problem. We cannot tell you to stop solving your problem without giving you a different way to solve it. Make sense? If a car is making too much noise we don’t tell the owner to take out the engine. That is what we, my colleagues, are doing when we tell you to “stop smoking”. You know it’s harmful, duh. Yet you do not choose to stop. Why not? It’s not the addiction, although that is a component. There are many factors involved in cigarette smoking and it is complex, but the reason you suck burning gasses into your lungs is to treat anxiety. Nicotine is one of the most powerful anxiolytics (fancy doctor talk for relieves stress). And inhaling it produces effects faster than an intravenous injection. Light, inhale, and ahhhh, relief.
Unfortunately for you, and great for the tobacco companies, is that it is very short acting. When it wears off the anxiety returns and you light up again. So it’s also one of the worst anxiolytics known because of the short duration.
Don't quit cigarettes - yet
The goal then is not to stop cigarette smoking but to replace cigarette anxiety control with less harmful anxiety control. This is where the Dr. Dan food plans come in. A wonderful added benefit of good sleep is lower anxiety levels. A wonderful added benefit of fasting is lowering of anxiety, especially a 48 hour dopamine reset fast. A wonderful added benefit of nutritious delicious low inflammatory food is, yep, lower anxiety levels. The weight loss that naturally occurs with all the above also lowers anxiety levels. See where I’m going? Now add in meditation and some exercise and your general anxiety level will be dramatically lower. Follow the Dr. Dan food plans for six months. With your baseline anxiety now much lower you can likely quit if you haven’t already.
Of course we want to get you off the cigarettes, but we want to do so with compassion and a realistic strategy. You can also consider adding ketamine therapy during this time as well. Remember changing your food lifestyle is stressful. The last thing you need to worry about is to also stop using the one thing that works to help your anxiety. Let’s put the cigarettes on the radar but only at the finish line. While transitioning into the full plan just follow the old, very old, U.S. Army instructions, “light ’em if you got ’em”. It’s true, the U.S. government used to give soldiers cigarettes.