Q. I run and lift weights — but I smoke cigarettes, too. I don’t notice a problem with my lungs when I run. Am I better able to cope with the smoke because I’m physically fit?
A. Some people who smoke but exercise assume that strengthening their lungs by working out must cancel the negative effects of smoking. To a nonsmoker, this seems like a form of denial, or cognitive-dissonance, where a person convinces himself that a behavior is not as bad as it seems.
But a 2006 study in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention suggests that this rationalization might not be totally off base. Researchers followed more than 36,000 women for 16 years. They found that those who smoked, but who participated in vigorous physical activity at least twice a week, were nearly 30 percent less likely to get lung cancer than those women who were inactive. Women who participated in moderate physical activity at least two times per week were 23 percent less likely to develop lung cancer. These results held even after the researchers factored in how long and how much the women smoked.
Another study in a 2009 issue of the Journal of Women’s Health looked at more than 700 women who were suspected of having blocked arteries, or myocardial ischemia. The women reported their smoking habits and estimated their ‘exercise capacity,’ or their ability to participate in a variety of moderate and strenuous exercise activities.
About six years from the start of the study, those who smoked the most and exercised the least had the highest risks of experiencing a stroke, heart failure or other cardiac event. Those women who didn’t smoke but had a high exercise capacity had the lowest risks. Neither of these results is surprising, of course. But among smokers, those with the highest exercise capacity had significantly lower health risks than smokers who had a low exercise capacity. But the exercising smokers still had increased risks of a cardiac event compared to nonsmokers.
These studies suggest that exercising smokers are not totally off the hook. Your likelihood of getting a lung disease — or having a cardiac event — is linked to the number of cigarettes smoked over the years. And smoking at all does increase health risks. A 2009 study in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation, found that smoking as few as three cigarettes each day increased the risk of heart and lung diseases by as much as 72 percent.
But an increased disease risk is a long-term effect of smoking. In the short term, smoking actually impairs exercise performance — whether you are aware of it or not. One 1985 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology had healthy men smoke three cigarettes an hour for five hours and then perform an exercise test to exhaustion. Their cardiovascular function was impaired as seen by a decreased ability to utilize oxygen and increased “rate pressure product,” which is a marker of stress to the heart marked by an increased resting heart rate and increased systolic blood pressure.
The good news is that regular exercise seems to help people quit. So even if you think you can handle the smoking because you don’t huff and puff when you work out, try to find a new habit!
Do you have a health question for Martica? Send e-mail to experts@microsoft.com. Please include Ask Martica in the subject line. Each of our experts responds to one question each week and the responses are posted on Mondays on MSN Health. We regret that we cannot provide a personalized response to every submission.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий