The key is determining how to weed through the bad medicals thousands of published medical articles and developing judgment as to what is good science from what is quackery.
Now for the medicals fake carrot aspect of giving up smoking more kisses and hugs when you no longer smell and taste like a dirty ashtray. Your home, car and office will no longer be coated in a yellow oily film that is the residue of the smoke you exhale. Your appearance will improve as the dryness of your face and the ensuing wrinkles gradually disappear. That puckered upper lip will gradually smooth out, making you seem years younger.
Forty years ago we completely changed our lifestyle. Why? We were tricked by a fake cholesterol scare campaign that caused millions of people to get tested. The test method was incorrect medicals bad and fake slim healthy people were put on a diet. The diet was a simple reversal of our trusted traditional diet. It became known as the pyramid diet.
In the case of my colleague, her problem was foot odor, which often occurs when when you don't wear socks. Our solution: she'd bring in her socks and I'd put them on her feet. Case solved.
What are they to do? If they are going to get out of debt, something in their lives is going to have to change. The private school is going to have to go, camp may be out, or they are going to have to start making more money. The same is true for you. If you want to get out of debt, you are going to have to identify why you went into debt and change that behavior or pattern.
Which is why every time I'm about to enter a patient's exam room to deliver bad news myself I pause and remember Mrs. Peterson, a woman I've never seen or heard from since, but whose life I irrevocably changed in the middle of the night while she lay at home in bed without her husband next to her--as she would from that point forward--all those years ago.