Want to quit smoking in just one hour? Follow Amira El-Naqeeb "Finally," Diaa Salib cries out, "I've managed to give up smoking." Nearly 17 years of two to three 20-packs a day had left the 45-year-old in bad shape. Salib had managed to stop for up to a year but his craving for nicotine never stopped for a minute throughout this time. "It was," he said, "like hell." A month into the Tabac-Stop programme now, by contrast, he has neither craving nor any doubts about smoking again -- he is living normally. A Swiss company founded in Geneva, the Tabac-Stop Centre has spread widely in Switzerland and around the world through franchises. In Egypt it has proved remarkably successful. Nour Aboul- Ela, the Egyptian franchise owner, received a diploma from Geneva before coming home to put these "laser techniques" to good use: "Our aim is to protect people's health by helping them to quit smoking in one hour." The inclusion of "laser" in a one-hour miracle cure may sound dangerous and off-putting, but Salib's own personal story should be sufficient to allay any fear. Aboul-Ela 's work is but the final stop on a long arduous journey. It was Aboul-Ela's own mother, a heavy smoker with the will to stop and had tried many methods in vain, who first pointed her in the direction of opening the centre. After being treated at the original Tabac-Stop Centre, the lady never lit another cigarette. Investigating, Aboul-Ela realised that a "soft" or "low beam light" laser applied at the appropriate acupuncture points on the body and ears could effectively eliminate nicotine cravings. "When we smoke," she explained, "it is nicotine that raises the endorphin release rate in our bloodstream," endorphin being the opium-like feel-good hormone also associated with physical exertion. "Within an hour of smoking a cigarette, the endorphin rate goes down again, prompting the need for another." Natural endorphin-release is eventually suppressed in the hypothalamus gland, with nicotine taking over the whole process. "By triggering the nerve endings, a laser beam can reactivate the gland, stimulating the natural process of endorphin production." Nabil Abdel-Maqsoud, professor at the Qasr Al-Aini University Hospital, explains that the beams are safer than acupuncture needles, which can cause an allergic reaction or an infection. Derived from Chinese medicine, the Tabac-Stop process, he says, is extremely effective but requires the motivation of the smoker: "it has almost no side effects, so long as it is done by an expert who can apply the right frequency of laser within the right parameters." But without the will to stop smoking, the laser method doesn't work. For her part Lamia Rizq, 27, had managed to ignore health-hazard warnings for 12 years long years; a heavy smoker since she started, in the last three years she was on two 20-packs a day. But when she lost several family members to lung cancer, she could no longer turn a blind eye to the damage she had been doing her own health -- and she started paying attention to short-term effects, too. "I used to have short breath accompanied by chest pain during sleep," she recalls. "My skin, too, looked pale." Two sessions at Tabac-Stop have relieved all such symptoms, enabling her to stop for two and a half months now, a process she found "quick, easy and painless". A stimulant that can also induce relaxation, according to Aboul-Ela, nicotine induces an addictive effect precisely through its capacity to release endorphins, though in the long term, recent research suggests, nicotine depresses the brain's ability to experience pleasure. Addiction is dependence, Aboul-Ela explains, always psychological and sometimes physical, involving behavioural responses between a living organism and a drug, in which the former takes the latter continuously or periodically to experience its pleasant effect or avoid the discomfort of its absence. When smokers stop they not only crave nicotine, they also experience restlessness, sleep disturbances, anxiety, decreased heart rate and increased appetite or a susceptibility to putting on weight. Such withdrawal symptoms are what makes stopping difficult, and the Tabac-Stop programme protects smokers from them by giving them an endorphin boost, "skipping all the pain", as it were. The programme doesn't always work. Ahmed Khaled, 35, joined three times without results; he was driven by fear of a heart attack, he says, but he concedes he did not have the will to stop. Still, it's been three weeks since his fifth session and he has managed to reduce the number of cigarettes he smokes per day from 40 to five. Abdel-Maqsoud confirmed this tendency: lack of will makes the treatment ineffective, but tends to result in a significant reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked, usually from 40 to six. So, whether or not a smoker has the will, "it is a win-win situation". The programme package -- two 28-minute sessions, which are all it takes 82 per cent of smokers with the will to stop -- comes at a hefty LE2,500; and the centre follows up with ex- smokers for one year free of charge; this covers an extra session in the event of relapse or psychological shock. Facts and figures: - Egyptians consume 84 billion cigarettes per year. - Some 15 million Egyptians smoke. - Egyptian smokers increase by six to eight per cent every year. - Egypt has 500,000 smokers under 15 years of age and 15,000 under 10. - According to the World Health Organisation, one- third of young smokers start before the age of 10, and the vast majority of adult smokers start before the age of 18.
