Stop Smoking Laser Therapy. Does it Work? Is it a Fraud?

Quit smoking laser therapy has been touted as a simple pain free and successful way to stop smoking. However there is some controversy over laser therapy to stop smoking.

But first, what is quit smoking laser therapy?

Laser therapy to stop smoking has been around for quite a number of years. It is, according to those who practice it, the application of low level laser to the acupuncture points in the body to stimulate the nerve endings which in turn produce endorphins.

And this, it is claimed, is a way to help smokers to kick those cigarettes and stop smoking. The release of endorphins help relieve the stressful effects of nicotine withdrawal and make it easier to kick the tobacco habit. The physical cravings are reduced and the stress of the addiction withdrawal are reduced.

This low level laser treatment is combined with counselling in most cases, and it is the overall treatment which results in tobacco addiction sufferers being able to quit smoking according to those who offer low level laser treatments for stopping smoking.

It is claimed by some practitioners that one half hour laser therapy session can be enough to be successful for getting a large number of people stopping smoking. Others claim no more than a few sessions should be sufficient.

It is, of course, quite expensive to undertake this quit smoking laser therapy, given that the actual amount of face to face time is quite limited.

I don't intend to tell you here whether quit smoking laser therapy works or not. That's for a number of reasons, particularly that I don't have sufficient evidence to tell you either way. However I do intend to alert you to the fact that there is quite some doubt over the technique, and there are those who maintain that it does nothing at all to assist people to quit smoking.

Unfortunately it seems that there is little published and publicly available scientific evidence on the efficacy of using low level laser therapy for stopping smoking. Although the laser clinics claim scientific evidence it is difficult to find any, and they do not offer links on their websites to the papers published by the scientists who have studied this laser therapy. The author has been unable to find any authoritative published studies, and there are plenty of others who claim this lack of any supporting evidence means that, currently at least, laser therapy to stop smoking has to be viewed as unproven.

For example, in 2006, the US consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to stop 5 US quit smoking laser treatment companies from claiming that low level laser therapy is successful in helping people stop smoking. It is not approved by the FDA as an anti smoking treatment, although it is as a pain relief treatment.

And I document on my website a range of other sources all of which suggest that stop smoking laser therapy is a fraud or close to.

Even the companies which market laser therapy will admit to it being "experimental".

For those in the grip of a serious nicotine and cigarette addiction it isn't easy to find a way forward to combat that addiction and to stop smoking successfully. However anyone who opts for laser therapy as a means to stop smoking should understand that it isn't currently scientifically proven to work.