The Surprising Effect of Exercise on Smoking

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!

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Montana State campuses to go smoke free this fall

Montana State University campuses in Bozeman and Billings plan to kick the smoking habit this fall.
The Bozeman campus goes smoke free on Aug. 1, followed two weeks later by the Billings campus on Aug. 15.
"There is no right to smoke," Darla Tyler-McSherry, health educator with Student Health Services, told the Billings Gazette. "There is a desire to smoke. We aren't saying you can't smoke, just that you can't smoke on campus."
Some students are against the ban.

"What's next? No nachos?" said ex-smoker Stephen Samek. "Everybody should make their own decisions. I agree it (smoking) is not healthy, but I think it's a personal choice."
Currently, both campuses allow smoking 30 feet away from buildings. There are no restrictions on other tobacco products.
Other schools have already banned tobacco products. University of Montana campuses in Missoula, Butte, Dillon and Helena have bans in place, as does Fort Peck Community College in Poplar.
Sixty-one percent of MSU students voted for a tobacco-free campus in March 2011. A month later, 72 percent of employees voted for the ban on campus.
"There is a need and desire to quit this unhealthy habit," Tyler-McSherry said.
She said the current policy at the MSU-Billings campus is hard to enforce because of the difficulty in estimating 30 feet from a building. That meant people still had to walk through smoke from smokers around building entrances.

At the Billings campus, smokers will have to move to public sidewalks that border the campus.
Designated smoking areas are planned to the north of campus buildings at the College of Technology, which doesn't have safe places to stand along Central Avenue and Shiloh Road.
Across the nation in October 2011, at least 252 campuses were tobacco. There were 586 smoke free campuses.

Smoke signals of the very worrying kind

As the saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Three recent surveys prove beyond reasonable doubt – yet again, most would add – that notwithstanding the deleterious effects of active and passive smoking many still persist in causing damage to themselves and to those around them, including their most loved ones, such as children.

Last week, a study by Maltese doctors contained some shocking statistics about the effect of smoking on children. Thirty-one per cent of children aged between five and eight were passive smokers, followed by 51 per cent of 13- to 15-year-olds. Apart from more extensive exposure to direct and second-hand smoke, it has also been confirmed that smoking parents impart a “very bad example” to their children and induce them to start smoking themselves.
The study did have a silver lining, though. It results that passive smoking among teenagers is on the decline, indicating education could be bearing fruit.
May that be the case for the findings of an EU-wide survey, announced in the middle of this month, painted a gruesome picture of a stubborn cigarette smoker that could be in denial of the real effects tobacco has on one’s own health.

The research concluded that bloody images and alarming messages on cigarette packets seem to have done little to repel Maltese smokers. It does not appear that the messages escaped their attention – in fact, many of those interviewed could recall them – but most admitted they simply ignored the messages.
Worse, not even the “messages” one carries on one’s own body as a result of tobacco consumption appear to be that off-putting. A campaign that the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate launched in the last days of 2011 stresses the point that smokers can look between eight and 12 years older than they actually are because smoking actively ages one’s appearance.

Smoking results in the inhalation of a complex cocktail of poisons that lead to early wrinkles, bad skin and damaged hair.
Apart from the external and visible consequences of smoking, internal complications are legion and this results in avoidable death. Indeed, smoking is the commonest cause of avoidable death. It kills half its users: 650,000 persons in the EU alone annually.
This has been said before but the consequences of tobacco use can be so serious and tragic that they should be highlighted as often as possible.
Individuals usually start smoking through peer pressure and then become addicted because of substances added to cigarettes to encourage addiction. This leads to 11 times more people dying of tobacco in the EU than from traffic accidents.

Cancer, hypertension, stroke and heart attack are all caused or worsened by smoking. In addition, women who smoke are up to 40 times more likely to get a heart attack. The chances of smokers likely to have menstrual problems and find it more difficult to become pregnant as their fertility rate is reduced by about 28 per cent also increase. Smokers also become more prone to develop pregnancy complications and have babies with health problems.

Education, as was noted above, helps but perhaps the best way to discourage smoking is to make tobacco prohibitively expensive. Smokers should be heavily taxed for two reasons: to discourage tobacco consumption and the effects of second-hand smoke on others and to fund the treatment of the inevitable health problems that such self-destructive habits generate in both smokers and others, again, through second-hand smoke.

Tobacco Free Florida Week Underway

Each year, Tobacco Free Florida Week is an opportunity to educate and empower Floridians about relevant issues related to tobacco use in the state. This year’s focal point, secondhand smoke (SHS), is one of the issues that affects every single Floridian, according to a press release from Tobacco Free Florida.

The fourth annual Tobacco Free Florida Week runs from March 26 through April 1. Themed “Fresh Air for All,” the week’s events and messaging highlight the progress made in protecting Floridians from the harmful effects of SHS and look to the challenges ahead, as SHS continues to impact Florida’s health.

Secondhand Smoke

Despite the substantial decrease in smokers in the state and the growing trend of smoke-free policies -- both indoors and out -- many of Florida’s most vulnerable are still involuntarily affected by SHS’s harmful chemicals, hundreds of which are toxic and almost 70 are proven to cause cancer. Each year, approximately 2,520 non-smoking adults in Florida die primarily from exposure to SHS.

What the State's Surgeon General has to say:

“We are committed to protecting Floridians, especially children who sometimes do not have a voice. One of the most crucial ways to protect yourself and your loved ones from the dangers of SHS is to maintain a 100 percent smoke-free home,” said Dr. Frank Farmer, Florida’s State Surgeon General. “While a home should always be a safe place for children, the fact is that the primary place young children breathe SHS is in their own homes.

Outside of the home:

Florida residents benefit from Florida’s Clean Indoor Air Act (FCIAA), which was amended in 2003 to protect people from exposure to SHS and prohibit smoking in indoor workplaces. While the FCIAA protects many, countless Floridians are involuntarily exposed to the dangers of SHS in the nightlife industry, construction and other blue-collar industries while making a living and providing for their families.

The bottom line is that there is no risk-free level of exposure to SHS. Even breathing SHS for short periods of time, like at a bar or a nightclub, can be dangerous. When you breathe SHS, tobacco smoke immediately seeps into the bloodstream and changes its chemistry so that the blood becomes stickier, allowing clots to form that can cause major blockages in already narrowed arteries. Damage to the heart can be significant, if not deadly.

FDA Takes New Steps in 'Tobacco Epidemic' Fight

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued two separate actions today in the Obama Administration's continued bid "to help fight the tobacco epidemic and stop children from using tobacco."

The first draft guidance directs tobacco companies to submit the harmful and potentially harmful chemicals -- and the amount of each one -- contained in any tobacco product, as required by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The second draft guidance gives companies the information needed to submit applications to market or advertise modified risk tobacco products.

"These are critical steps in achieving the FDA's mission to protect the public's health," Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), explained in a conference call this afternoon.

In line with the requirement to account for the ingredients in tobacco products, the FDA also established a list of 93 harmful and potential harmful constituents (HPHCs) that tobacco companies will be required to report for every regulated tobacco product sold in the United States. The agency's goal is to make the information on the amount of HPHCs in specific products available to the public in a consumer-friendly format by April 2013.

Of those 93 HPHCs, the agency has identified 20 that tobacco companies will be required to report this year. The remainder will be phased in over time, Deyton said. The first 20 include ammonia, nicotine, formaldehyde and carbon monoxide. The HPHCs include chemicals found in tobacco naturally and those generated when tobacco is smoked, said Dr. David Ashley, director of the CTP's Office of Science.

The second guidance follows the Tobacco Control Act's established scientific criteria that an applicant's tobacco product must meet before the FDA can allow the product to be sold and marketed as modified risk. It describes scientific studies and analyses an applicant must submit to demonstrate that the product will, or is expected to, significantly reduce harm or exposure to individuals, and benefit the health of the population as a whole.

"The law sets a high standard to make sure products marketed as modified risk actually are," Deyton added.

Let's quickly get synthetic marijuana off our streets

The Georgia General Assembly needs to keep the pressure on those who skirt the laws of this state to sell substances that can be potentially harmful to our youth and adults.

Lawmakers seem to be doing that with the passage of Senate Bill 370, which addresses all brands of synthetic marijuana.
As the law stands now, what essentially is synthetic marijuana can be sold legally in novelty shops and convenience stores and is in many places around the state.

What the new law does is outlaw the primary chemicals that go into synthetic marijuana, as well as anything else that might be produced from its active ingredients or their derivatives and marketed as a “fun-time” product for legal consumption.

Gov. Nathan Deal should not waste time getting this legislation off his desk and onto the streets. He should sign it ASAP and put it into effect immediately. Until he does, the substance will continue to be legal and readily available.

Anything that might encourage experimentation with real marijuana or harsher street drugs like cocaine and the ever popular crack cocaine does not need to be on the shelves where children go to buy candy.

And teens don’t need any more temptation or distractions than they already have.

Drugs remain the No. 1 destroyer of individuals and families. They also are behind much of the crime that occurs in this city and county ... There also is the cost to the victims and to the taxpayers, who must pay dearly to house these people in jail or try them or run them through drug court.

Tips From Smokers Campaign Begins

New anti-tobacco ads launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have hit Wisconsin airwaves as part of a national campaign– and are creating a buzz about the harsh reality of illness and the damage real people suffer as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.

The ads from CDC’s “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign feature compelling stories of former smokers living with their smoking-related diseases and disabilities, including lung and throat cancer, heart attack, stroke, Buerger’s disease and asthma.

Currently around one in five adults in Wisconsin smoke and just under 18 percent of high school teens. Nearly 8,000 Wisconsinites lose their lives each year from tobacco-related illness.

“The campaign serves as an important counter to the $233 million that the tobacco industry spends to promote their products annually in Wisconsin,” said Marilyn Jenkins of the NW Wisconsin Tobacco Free Coalition, adding that it’s an uphill battle to take on the tobacco industry with its significant resources.

The state’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program has had success in reducing the rates of smoking in Wisconsin despite facing severe cuts over the last several years. Wisconsin’s program is currently funded at $5.3 million a year. The CDC’s recommendation for funding in Wisconsin is $64 million.

“With decreased funding, we need all the help we can get,” said Jenkins. “I hope smokers look at these ads and decide to quit, and that young people see them and realize that the health consequences of tobacco use are immediate and deadly serious."