Overall, he says, women had a 25 percent lower success rate on any given attempt to quit than men did. Shiffman recently analyzed 12 clinical trials involving more than 4,400 individuals who were trying to quit smoking. He says the federal data don't include the number of times people tried to quit. He says the federal data just counts the "bodies, as it were," adding up how many people nationwide are ex-smokers at any given time. While data from federal household surveys show that men and women have approximately equal success in ultimately quitting smoking, mounting evidence indicates that women have a harder time when they actually try to quit. He also says this seems to occur more frequently with women. Shiffman says people tend to have lapses when they're emotionally upset. Shiffman says relapse starts with a single lapse - for example, smoking a cigarette during a period of not smoking, thinking that the return to smoking is temporary. "So, essentially the key to quitting is avoiding relapse," he says. "Relapse is the whole game," says Shiffman, who notes that among men and women who quit smoking without any treatment like nicotine replacement, about three-fourths return to smoking within just one week. University of Pittsburgh psychologist Saul Shiffman says acute emotion - getting upset suddenly - can have a "big role" in getting women to pick up a cigarette. Researchers don't know exactly why this may be the case, but they speculate that women are more sensitive than men to sudden emotional upset. But some studies show that women have a harder time keeping their no-smoking vows than men. Quitting cigarettes is not easy for anyone. Tonya Guess, with her husband, Andrae Boone, says she wants to quit smoking for her 3-year-old daughter.
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