Chronic pain can be challenging to live with. Fortunately, there are a few steps you can take to make it more manageable. Medical News Today suggests trying physical methods like soft-tissue massages, which can boost flexibility and blood circulation, or relaxation techniques like deep breathing, which can aid in relieving the tension your aches can cause.

However, pain-relieving actions aren’t the only thing you can do to manage chronic pain—you can also eliminate activities that make your pain worse. That’s why one of the best things you can do for chronic pain management is to quit smoking. Read on to find out more about the relationship between smoking and chronic pain and how you can quit.

Smoking and chronic pain

If you use cigarettes frequently, you might be under the impression that smoking relieves chronic pain. To some extent, it does—temporarily. Cigarette usage triggers reward chemicals like dopamine in your brain, which can, for a time, mask the aches you’re continually feeling.

However, cigarettes’ effects aren’t limited to the above—and they’re not positive, either. According to a 2021 article from the Keck School of Medicine, cigarettes damage your nociceptors, sensory end organs in your skin, joints, and viscera. Over time, this can degrade them and worsen your chronic pain. In addition, cigarette tobacco negatively impacts the delivery of blood to your tissues, lessening the amount of oxygen and nutrients your body gets and impacting the performance of your bones and immune systems.

All of this can weaken a body already riddled with chronic pain—and even worse, may block you from getting helpful chronic pain treatments like neurostimulators. For your health, it’s best to opt out of cigarette usage.

How to quit smoking

Use alternative nicotine products

While you may want to quit smoking immediately, doing so abruptly can lead to symptoms like tremors and lack of sleep, which could also increase your pain levels. For this reason, you’ll want to quit gradually with alternative nicotine products that can relieve these physical symptoms for a comfortable cessation process. Two good products to try are nicotine pouches and patches. Pouches are soft, flavored packets with fibers and nicotine, which you keep between your lip and gum. Consider starting with LUCY nicotine pouches, as they have a unique moisture-enhancing blend optimized to deliver rapid relief from smoking withdrawal. Their nicotine is also lab-made, guaranteeing it’s completely free of toxic tobacco. Nicotine patches, meanwhile, are stickers that infuse the nicotine through your skin. You can get you patches from Nicoderm CQ, which disseminates nicotine through your bloodstream for 24 hours to provide long-lasting withdrawal relief.

Leverage cognitive behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can give you the mental tools you need to identify maladaptive thoughts and behaviors and change them by restructuring your mindset. You may find that this treatment especially suits you—according to a Medicine article on integrated cognitive therapy, patients with chronic pain who underwent CBT demonstrated statistically significant improvement in catastrophic cognition. This helped them with their feelings of disability and enabled them to make improvements to their life. You can leverage this effect to quit smoking. With the help of a professional, you can use CBT to examine what triggers you to smoke, be conscious of them, and deliberately not act upon your cigarette cravings.

Try acupuncture

Alongside the above solutions from Western medicine, you could also benefit from trying a traditional Chinese treatment: acupuncture. This is the practice of stimulating specific body points to promote energy flow and healing. The treatment is demonstrated to be efficacious for chronic back pain, supporting other pain relief treatments and improving bodily function. But the 2020 Cleveland Clinic article “Want to Quit Smoking? Acupuncture Can Help You With Cravings” adds that acupuncture via pressure points in the ears can also help you reduce your cigarette urges, as it slows down your body’s stress response to withdrawal and stimulates feel-good endorphins. In short, using this treatment can moderate the desire to smoke while also promoting overall well-being in people with chronic pain.

Cigarettes can worsen your chronic pain. Follow the above tips to quit for the sake of your health.