Train your brain Researchers from Yale University, US, performed brain scans of study participants, all of whom were smokers, while asking them to consider different scenarios.
These included things like imagining they were smoking a cigarette and how it felt, as well as thinking about what might happen to their health if they continued to smoke long-term.
As a control, the study participants also considered non-smoking related scenarios. The researchers saw decreased activity in the area of the brain linked to cravings and addictions whenever the smokers thought about the long-term consequences of smoking.
This implies that by learning more about what would happen to your health, body, family as a result of your smoking, and by focusing on those things, you would actually find it easier to quit.
Smoking causes 90% of lung cancer deaths, the second most common type of cancer in the UK, after breast cancer (Source: Cancer Research UK).