Because of nicotine addiction and the association of smoking with other activities, smoking is a difficult habit to break. While there is no easy way to quit, sports can be a good way to keep your body healthy while taking your mind off smoking. Participating in sports is also a good method for youth smoking prevention.
Staying Fit
Because smoking cigarettes can curb your appetite, many smokers gain weight after they quit. However, gaining weight is not a foregone conclusion. In addition to eating longer meals, chewing gum and eating healthy, participating in sports is a good way to stay fit. Even if you find yourself eating more often after you quit smoking, participating in sports will take your mind off smoking and eating. While having fun you can also burn off extra calories you consume due to eating more frequently than you were as a smoker.
Sports vs. Smoking
While smoking can cause heart disease, decreased blood flow, lung cancer and stroke, sports and exercise can have the opposite effect. Exercise increases blood flow by making the heart stronger. Exercise can also help lower blood pressure and prevent heart disease while decreasing the chances of stroke by more than 50 percent.
Youth Smoking
According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost all adult smokers begin smoking as adolescents. Most adolescent smokers are addicted to smoking by the age of 20. Twenty percent of high school students smoke, according to the CDC. One way to prevent youth smoking is by getting young people involved in sports.
Preventing Youth Smoking
Because sports can be so important to children, sports can be an incentive to avoid smoking. Smoking can decrease blood circulation to the arms and legs, worsen asthma and cause various lung problems, making it harder for athletes to achieve peak performance. Therefore, people who are concerned about high performance in athletics are less likely to smoke.
Sports can also help kids avoid smoking, because coaches can help to educate their players about the dangers of tobacco and use sports to motivate them to avoid smoking, says the American Cancer Society.
Tobacco-Free Sports Movement
If current trends continue, more 6.4 million of today's youth will die of tobacco-related diseases, the CDC says. To help prevent youth smoking, the CDC has collaborated with other health organizations and famous athletes and coaches to start a tobacco-free sports movement.
