Quitting smoking is not an easy task due to the high level of addiction it causes, but smokers are increasingly aware of the dangers of this habit and are looking for solutions or ways to quit. A study carried out by a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Sciences (Israel) presented a simple and close way to quit smoking: while we sleep .
The research is based on the role of memory in our sleep. Many studies have shown that different types of memory are strengthened during certain stages of sleep, so why not take advantage of this key function to quit smoking?
It is a learning procedure in which a new smell is administered while patients are asleep, which is stored in the memory and which helps to reduce tobacco consumption even several days later . The experiment involved 66 participants, all of them smokers wanting to shed the burden of tobacco from their lives. The experts asked the volunteers to record in writing the number of cigarettes they smoked each day. In the same way, they were subjected to a simple learning procedure to associate the smell of cigarette smoke with various unpleasant odors.
Inside a sleep laboratory, the participants’ brain waves were monitored through electrodes on the scalp . Throughout the sleep cycle, they were exposed to various odors such as rotten eggs or fish for several days just after the smell of tobacco smoke. This process was repeated in all phases of sleep.
The following week, when they had to re-target the cigarettes they had consumed that new week, the researchers found that there had been a significant reduction in cigarette use in the volunteers who had undergone aversion conditioning during stage 2 of the study. sleep and REM phase.
The results, which have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience , suggest that a simple learning method administered during nighttime sleep can actually modify smoking behavior during the following days, so it is possible to follow it over a longer period of time may lead to a complete stop.
