While it is common knowledge that smoking is bad for your health, you may not fully understand the adverse consequences of cigarettes on your day-to-day routine. Even while partaking in healthy activities such as exercising, smoking takes a toll on the body. When you smoke, you are, in a sense, poisoning your body. It hinders athletic abilities in numerous ways, such as impairing the lungs, reducing physical endurance and increasing heart rate and stress on the body. Smoking also prevents you from reaching optimal gains from your fitness routine.
Exercise vs. Smoking
While quitting is the best choice when it comes to health consequences, it is not always attainable. If this is the case, physical activity is important because it can mitigate some of the effects of smoking. Exercise and smoking inversely affect the same organ systems. According to Michele Silence, MA, author of “Why Exercise and Smoking Don’t Mix,” smoking decreases lung capacity while exercise increases it. As smoking increases your risk of having a heart attack or lung cancer, exercise decreases it. Lastly, smoking produces phlegm that congests in the lungs, while exercise breaks it up and strengthens the lungs.
Lung Impairment
A 2008 Los Angeles Time article, “Exercise Can Do a Smoker’s Body Good” by Jeannine Stein, states that inhaling cigarette smoke causes a number of effects on the body that can affect physical activity, such as increasing lung inflammation, narrowing airways and allowing less oxygen to the body. Because muscles require oxygen to function properly, this could result in less strength and energy during workouts. A study conducted in 2000 published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise examined the effects of smoking cessation and found improvements in physical fitness after one week of quitting.
Effects of Carbon Monoxide
Even a small amount of carbon monoxide can negatively affect your body. When you smoke, your cells are coated in industrial grade solvents and tars, which take a tremendous toll on the body and make it difficult to breath. Dr. Zab Mosenifar, medical director of the Women's Guild Lung Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, claims that carbon monoxide compromises the ability of the blood's hemoglobin to transport oxygen from the lungs to the body, especially the muscles, during exercise.
Reduced Gains
Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, narrowing the muscular walls of blood vessels and slowing blood flow. Because of this strain, the heart must work harder. The impeded blood flow, in addition to hindered transport of oxygen to tissue due to carbon monoxide, can reduce your overall muscle gain and increase levels of fatigue during exercise. According to Silence, the rate of muscle repair post exercise affects the maximal expected rate of gain. Your body cannot build new muscle until it has repaired the muscle damaged by smoking.
Benefits of Quitting
Fortunately, Dr. Stanton Glantz, a cardiology professor at the University of California San Francisco, states that most negative cardiovascular effects from smoking begin to reverse within a few days of quitting. After only about a week of smoking cessation, an athlete will experience increased endurance and improved recovery. While some serious effects of smoking, such as lung inflammation, can go away permanently, others, such as cancer risks, linger. Whether you have been smoking for one month or 20 years, it is never too late to make a lifestyle change that can help you vastly improve your physical fitness and overall health.
