Healthy and smoke-free in 2023: nicotine patches, chewing gum and Co. "very good" - with four exceptions
Created: 12/29/2022, 3:08 p.m
By: Jannis Gogolin
Quitting cigarettes is a popular New Year's resolution.
Nicotine patches, chewing gum and the like can help.
But you should pay close attention to the package insert.
Munich – Slow cessation or cold turkey, substitute products and hypnosis: In order to give up smoking themselves, people resort to various and more or less effective methods.
As a resolution for the New Year, in addition to saving energy, various plasters containing nicotine, chewing gum and the like are sold for quitting cigarettes.
However, not all of these tools are free of harmful ingredients.
Smoke-free into the new year 2023: Plasters containing nicotine, chewing gum and Co. mostly “very good”
Contrary to advertising from the last century, cigarettes are harmful without exception.
Neither the type of tobacco nor the length of the filter can counteract the negative effects of nicotine, tar and other carcinogenic ingredients.
The lungs, mouth and teeth, the cardiovascular system and the skin are all known to be affected by cigarettes.
Good reasons to give up smoking.
The government in New Zealand also sees this and recently banned future generations from smoking by law.
Important: Look at the leaflet to avoid harmful ingredients
If cold turkey is too severe for you, there are assistive devices you can use to try to get abstinent.
Chewing gum, sprays, plasters or lozenges with different nicotine contents - the pharmacy has a wide range of products for addiction patients.
But how do the smoke-free items fare when the package insert is analyzed more closely?
The consumer
portal oekotest.de
examined twelve of the products for their ingredients and can recommend them - with a few exceptions.
First the good news: In the analysis by
oekotest.de,
eight of the twelve products scored “very good”.
However, the consumer portal complained about four of the tested aids.
No defects were found in the nicotine-containing patches and the spray from a manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.
The package insert for Johnson & Johnson chewing gum and lozenges contained controversial ingredients such as hormone-suspected BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) or the color pigment titanium dioxide, according to
oekotest.de
.
Hormone balance and genetic material in danger - four out of twelve tested products affected
Likewise, chewing gum of the brands Nicotin Beta and Nicotinell are contaminated with the substances mentioned, which are suspected of damaging the genetic material.
In food they are already banned by the EU.
Therefore, the four auxiliary products were only given the title "good".
However, there are no doubts about the effectiveness of any of the test objects.
Thus, they are a good way to increase the chances of quitting smoking and save money.
Because cigarettes will become even more expensive in the coming year.
However, abstinence will not be a sure-fire success despite help.
Nicotine is still taken care of - the physical withdrawal symptoms are dampened - and you save the approximately 3000 carcinogenic substances in a cigarette.
However, habits such as rolling your own after work or taking a smoke break together have to be broken.
Experts have compiled a list of additional tips to help you successfully quit smoking.
