Asmaa Approach or COL Approach is A Promising Smoking Cessation Method

Commentary

Smoking cessation or reduction is not only could reduce the premature aging, disabilities and deaths, but also could improve the quality of life of smokers [1]. Personal trials to quit smoking usually fail during the first few days mainly due to withdrawal symptoms such as impaired concentration, headache, and nervousness. Unfortunately, all the available licensed pharmacological products of smoking cessations showed many undesirable side effects. Hence, the need for complementary non pharmacological safe and affordable interventions was necessary. In September, 2022, IJHSR includes the original research article conducted by Asmaa Mahmoud Mohammed, MD and Adel Hashish, PhD, that examined a Novel non pharmacological Smoking Cessation method called COL Approach or Asmaa Approach on random sample of Egyptian smokers [2]. The most interesting aspect of this unique Egyptian study is that it included an integrated non pharmacological treatment strategy for quitting smoking, as it used triple interventions. I think that the corner stone in this approach was the frequent interpersonal behavioral counseling with emphasis on Stress management and resiliency strategies. As the interpersonal counseling has been used both groups; the intervention group and the control group, the complementary role of ready-made oat seeds meal in combination with the aromatherapy inhalation device became clear and obvious. In this Egyptian study, the whole oat seeds were used with its powerful Commentary antioxidant properties that present in the outer layer which was effective and promising than the use of oat extract as in the Japanese study [3]. The use of inhalation aromatherapy was promising also in decreasing the craving intensity and frequency for more than 120 minute. This novel approach was promising and effective in achieving high success rate (47.8%) and reduced failure rate (21.8%) after 12 weeks, which interestingly comparable result with NRT Bassiouny MR, et al. [4] and pharmacological approaches [5]. I think it is the time to move from the paradigm that focuses on the use of pharmacological agents in smoking cessation, to use integrative approaches that may include both the pharmacological and non-pharmacological agents to achieve higher success rate, lower failure rates with less adverse effects.