cancers, cognitive behavior, itchiness, pain
CANCERS, LUNG, DISEASES
Cigarette smoking is connected to a multitude of diseases and is the foremost contributor to preventable cancers. It exacts a toll of nearly 500 000 lives each year and imposes an annual health-care expenditure in excess of $300 billion (Mindfulness training encompasses intervention packages that provide individuals with meditation training and encourage them to incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives. The instructional content of mindfulness training guides individuals to simply observe sensory and mental states (eg, discomfort, itchiness, pain, urges, thinking, worrying) as they arise and fade away during meditation sessions, all without making associated responses (eg, moving, scratching, thinking about thinking, mental problem solving) (To apply the principle of nonresponse during mindfulness training sessions—a process of weakening behavior to enhance smoking cessation success in the population of smokers willing to make a quit attempt—we proposed introducing app-based mindfulness training to individuals before their voluntary quit attempt. This pre-quit period offers time to practice mindfulness training and cultivate nonresponse during meditation to weaken the probability of a smoking response when in a state of smoking abstinence and associated nicotine/tobacco deprivation [see Skinner (The research literature, in general, supports a net benefit to human health associated with participation in various mindfulness training programs, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, in both normative and clinical samples (In an efficacy trial that compared treatment packages, adults with nicotine dependence were randomly assigned to receive 4 weeks of in-person, group-based mindfulness training adapted specifically for smoking cessation or the American Lung Association’s cognitive behavior therapy program (