Monday is the day when it comes to thinking about kicking a smoking habit, according to a new study.


Researchers found that Google searches around quitting smoking -- such as "help quit smoking" -- are most common in the beginning of the week, with the most searches taking place on Mondays. The finding held true across six different languages, suggesting the behavior is global.


Knowing this could help public health advocates be strategic in their quit-smoking campaigns, researchers said.


"Campaigns for people to quit may benefit from shifting to weekly cues[1] ," study researcher Joanna E. Cohen, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control, said in a statement. "We know it takes smokers many quit attempts before they succeed, so prompting them to try again on Mondays may be an effective and easy to implement campaign."


Cohen worked with other researchers from San Diego State University, The Santa Fe Institute and The Monday Campaigns, a nonprofit public health organization, on the study. Funding for the study came from The Monday Campaigns and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.


The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine[2] , involved looking at Google searches around the world that were made between 2008 and 2012. Researchers examined searches in six languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Russian. They analyzed query volumes in proportion to other searches.


For English searches in particular, people searched about quitting smoking 11 percent more on Mondays than on Wednesdays, 67 percent more on Mondays than on Fridays, and 145 percent more on Mondays than on Saturdays.


Are you thinking of quitting the habit? For some tips, click through the slideshow below:



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  • Mindfulness


    Mindfulness training helped participants in a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21723049" target="_hplink">2011 <em>Drug and Alcohol Dependence</em> study</a> to stay off cigarettes.

    That study included 88 people who smoked 20 cigarettes daily, on average, who were split up into two groups: One received four weeks of mindfulness training, while the other group went through four weeks of an <a href="http://www.ffsonline.org/" target="_hplink">American Lung Association stop-smoking program</a>.

    The researchers found that more of those who went through the mindfulness training smoked fewer cigarettes -- and stayed off them -- than those who went through the other stop-smoking program.

    The mindfulness training included <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minding-the-body/201204/can-mindfulness-help-you-quit-smoking" target="_hplink">realizing when you're facing a craving</a>, accepting it, thinking about what's happening and then taking note of the sensation (whether it's tightness or pressure), <em>Psychology Today</em> reported.




  • Weight Lifting


    Jogging and bicycling aren't the only exercises that could help you kick the smoking habit -- <em>Shape</em> magazine reported that <a href="http://www.shape.com/latest-news-trends/study-says-weight-lifting-can-help-smokers-quit-and-lose-weight" target="_hplink">weightlifting could help</a>, too.

    The research, published in the journal <em>Nicotine & Tobacco Research</em>, showed that doing two hour-long weightlifting sessions for 12 weeks <em>plus</em> undergoing treatment to quit smoking was linked with greater success in quitting smoking, compared with just undergoing the stop-smoking treatment.




  • Eat Produce


    <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/10/fruits-vegetables-quit-smoking-smokers-tobacco_n_1581465.html" target="_hplink">Eating lots of fruits and veggies</a> could help smokers maintain a tobacco-free lifestyle, according to research from the University of Buffalo.

    The study, published in the journal <em>Nicotine and Tobacco Research</em>, included 1,000 smokers ages 25 and older. The researchers had the participants answer surveys about their smoking habits and their fruit and vegetable intake. Then, they followed up with them 14 months later and asked them if they used tobacco over the past month.

    The researchers found that there was a relationship between the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/10/fruits-vegetables-quit-smoking-smokers-tobacco_n_1581465.html" target="_hplink">amount of fruits and vegetables</a> the study participants ate, and the likelihood that they quit -- and stayed off -- tobacco. In fact, people who ate the most produce in the study were three times more likely to report that they'd been tobacco free in the previous month.

    The researchers also found a link between increased produce consumption and taking longer in the day to have the first cigarette, smoking fewer cigarettes, and decreased dependence on nicotine (based on test results).




  • Acupuncture And Hypnosis


    A review of studies suggests there is evidence that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/07/acupuncture-quit-smoking-hypnosis_n_1497348.html" target="_hplink">acupuncture and hypnosis</a> can work to help quit smoking, Reuters reported.

    Researchers, who published their findings in the <em>American Journal of Medicine</em>, said that other options -- like medications and counseling -- should be tried first, but that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/11/hypnosis-quit-smoking_n_1248444.html" target="_hplink">hypnosis</a> and acupuncture could help if those options don't work, or if people don't want to go on medications, according to Reuters.




  • Text Messages


    Who knew your phone could be used to help you quit smoking?

    A recent study published in the <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60701-0/abstract" target="_hplink">journal <em>The Lancet</em></a> showed that smokers who enrolled in a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/smoking-text-message_n_888188.html" target="_hplink">program called "txt2stop"</a> -- where they received encouraging text messages to quit smoking -- were twice as likely to kick the habit after six months, compared with smokers who didn't get any encouraging messages.

    In the study, conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, one group was able to text words like "lapse" and "crave" to a phone number, and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20075843-247/want-to-quit-smoking-try-text-message-support/" target="_hplink">received an encouraging text</a> message in return, CNET reported. The other group of people, however, only got one text message every two weeks, and that message just thanked them for being part of the study.