Comparison of Nicotine Addiction Levels between Ya Dok Khao Herb and Massage Therapy

Abstract

Background: Smoking causes diseases such as emphysema and lung cancer. Thai traditional medicine plays a role in the treatment of reducing cigarette craving. Ya Dok Khao herb and acupressure are widely known nowadays for reducing cigarette craving. Such methods can be used to treat people with symptoms of smoking addiction to improve the quality of life and it is the use of traditional Thai wisdom herbs and traditional massage to treat smoking patients.
Objective: To compare the level of nicotine addiction between Ya Dok Khao and the acupressure groups.
Method: This research is a quasi-experimental research to study the level of nicotine addiction by using Ya Dok Khao herb and acupressure. Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence was used to measure the level of nicotine addiction before and after participating in the project. Purposive sampling was used to selected 40 participants from the population, and equally divided into Ya Dok Khao herb group and acupressure group. Wilcoxon Matched-pairs Signed rank test, Mann-Whitney U Test, and descriptive statistic were used for data analysis.
Results: The study showed that nicotine addiction level after using Ya Dok Khao herb was significantly lower from that before using Ya Dok Khoa herb (Z= -3.349, p =0.001). Likewise, the nicotine addiction level after acupressure was significantly lower from that before acupressure (Z= -2.636, p =0.008). However, there was no significant difference in reducing nicotine addiction level between Ya Dok Khao herb and acupressure by using Mann-Whitney U test (p = 0.862).
Conclusion: It could be concluded that both Ya Dok Khao herb and acupressure can reduce nicotine addiction level. There was no difference between Ya Dok Khao herb and acupressure in reducing nicotine addiction level.