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A smoking habit is so hard to break that it doesnt seem possible that a series of simple encouraging text messages could help in any significant way.

But a study of wannabe quitters published by the Lancet suggests that those messages act like a little electronic Jiminy Cricket, doubling the quit rate compared to people who received texts unrelated to quitting. Of 2,911 smokers randomly assigned to the no-smoking texts, 10.7% were abstinent six months out. Only 4.9% of the 2,881 smokers getting texts unrelated to quitting did so.

People got five text messages daily for the first five weeks and then three per week for the next six months, the study says.

Other studies have also found a positive effect from text messages, but the authors (led by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) say this is the first to actually verify whether people had quit by testing saliva for a byproduct of nicotine called cotinine.

The texts worked equally well among older and younger people, and among people of different socioeconomic groups.

The mystery is why they worked, the authors write.

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When you quit smoking, did you try not to think about cigarettes?

A new study shows that the technique may help people quit the habit – and others – but when they stopped suppressing the thoughts the habit came back with a vengeance.

This is called behavior rebound, according to researchers who published their study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research was done at St. George’s, University of London and the University of Hertfordshire.

They saw it in smokers, and in a previous study, they saw it in chocolate eaters.

“These findings have obvious implications for individuals seeking to give up certain behaviors, for example, smoking, overeating, drinking, sex and other excessive behaviors,” said James Erskine, a psychologist at St. George’

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