U.S. President Barack Obama is reported to have successfully quit smoking last fall, after trying for five years to kick the habit. He’s certainly not alone in battling the difficult odds to beat smoking addiction. Even though smoking has fallen from 40% of the U.S. population in 1970 to about 20% today, there are still 46 million American adults who smoke – and smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., causing 443,000 deaths each year. A recent CDC report found that almost 70% of smokers want to quit, but while more than half of American adult smokers tried to quit in the last year, only 6.2% managed to butt out for good.
While smokers may want a quick solution, 95% of people who try to quit cold turkey without medication, smoking cessation products or therapy are unsuccessful. Nicotine gum, lozenges and patches can help double the chances of quitting, especially when they are used with intensive behavioral programs, because they help reduce the cravings associated with withdrawal. President Obama reportedly used nicotine replacement therapy to help kick his habit.
To improve the odds of success, researchers are looking for innovative products that go beyond nicotine reduction to break the habit. Charles Kinzer, Ph.D., and his research team at Columbia University in New York have developed Lit 2 Quit, a mobile game app for smartphones that mimics both the physiological and psychological responses to smoking.
“We developed a good game, because it addresses what smokers desire when they smoke: it’s fun, it uses breath control therapy, requires hand motions, and includes a social element, to mimic the effects of cigarette smoking,” says Dr. Kinzer, Principal Investigator for the Lit 2 Quit Game Project and Program Coordinator for the Computing, Communication and Technology in Education Program at Columbia University.
The game takes 3-5 minutes to play, the same amount of time as an average smoke break. It was designed with two modes of play, because some people smoke to increase alertness, while others smoke to relieve stress and relax. In Rush Mode, players hyperventilate into the microphone to move their avatar in a fast-paced, brightly colored game to pass warp gates and obstacles. In Relax Mode, players use slower, deep breathing exercises to move their avatar in a calm game space with gentle colors. The game includes the possibility for infrared linking between players, recognizing that taking a smoke break is a social activity for some people.
To see if the game produces similar effects in the body as smoking, researchers measured participants’ brain waves, heart rate and skin conductance after playing different versions of the game and compared those results to measurements taken before and after smoking. Results confirmed that the physiological responses were similar. Participants playing the rush mode reported that they felt more alert and those that played the relax mode said they felt like they had done some yoga. Lit 2 Quit was tested on the iPod Touch and the iPhone, but since it was developed using the Unity program, it will be easy to adapt to the Android platform in the future.
The Lit 2 Quit project received two years of funding from the Health Games Research program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Kinzer and his team are now moving forward to approach the Lung Association, the National Institutes of Health and other organizations to seek funding for larger scale clinical trials. “We developed a game that can mimic the psychological and physiological effects of nicotine. The ultimate objective is to prove conclusively that Lit 2 Quit can reduce smoking or help people quit altogether and launch the app to as broad an audience as possible in a year or two. Ultimately, we hope that people who want to quit will reach for the game instead of a cigarette,” says Dr. Kinzer.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Watch this video on Advance for Occupational Therapy Practitioners to see Lit 2 Quit in action and hear Dr. Kinzer and his research team explain in detail how the game works. The FDA has approved a variety of smoking cessation products including prescription medications, over-the-counter skin patches, lozenges and chewing gum. You can find more resources about quitting smoking at smokefree.gov, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association.
PREVIOUS POST
