People who smoke should know about every aspect of how smoking harms their bodies. Most people understand the link between smoking and illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and strokes. However, smoking also damages your health by lowering the amount of vital nutrients that your body can access. Smokers tend to eat less fruits and vegetables and tend to metabolize food and vitamins faster than nonsmokers.
Eating Habits
According to Dr. Jean Dallongeville and colleagues, in a "Journal of Nutrition" article, smokers tend to have less healthy eating habits than nonsmokers. For example, Dallongeville and colleagues report that on average smokers eat significantly more fats than nonsmokers, and smokers consume significantly less fiber and vitamins than nonsmokers. Dallongeville and colleagues do not claim that smoking causes unhealthy eating habits. Smoking and unhealthy eating may simply both be symptoms of smokers' unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Metabolism
Smoking cigarettes raises your metabolism, which means that smokers burn through nutrients faster than nonsmokers. In the article "Weight Gain and Adipose Tissue Metabolism after Smoking Cessation in Women" in "International Journal of Obesity," Dr. C.M. Ferrara and colleagues suggest that women metabolize significantly more fats when they smoke than when they do not smoke. While this may sound like a benefit to some, your body actually benefits from certain amounts of fats. This means that smokers may not receive a proper, healthy amount of fats.
Vitamin Depletion
Cigarette smoking deprives your body of important vitamins. For example, in an article for the "Journal of Nutrition," Dr. Ting Li and colleagues showed that exposing rats to cigarette smoke lowers their levels of vitamin A. Li and colleagues suggest that low levels of vitamin A may contribute to the development of emphysema. Also, Dr. Alfredo Morabia and colleagues showed in an article in the "European Journal of Clinical Nutrition" that women who smoke tend to have deficiencies in calcium and vitamin D, relative to nonsmoking women.
Effects
The fact that smoking depletes your system of essential vitamins and nutrients makes your body more susceptible to damage from illnesses or even smoking itself. In an article for Net Doctor, Dr. Dan Rutherford states that the vitamin depletion brought on by smoking amplifies the damage that smoking does to your body. Your body normally uses vitamins to repair the sort of damage that smoking inflicts. However, because smoking depletes your body's vitamin reserves, it is less able to deal with the damage caused by smoking cigarettes.
Take Action
The best thing you can do to correct the loss of vital nutrients due to cigarettes is to quit smoking. However, in lieu of quitting, you will want to maximize your intake of fruits and vegetables to replenish the nutrients depleted from smoking. For example, the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University recommends that smokers intake 35 mg more vitamin C per day than nonsmokers.
References
- "Journal of Nutrition": Cigarette Smoking Is Associated with Unhealthy Patterns of Nutrient Intake: a Meta-analysis
- "International Journal of Obesity": Weight Gain and Adipose Tissue Metabolism after Smoking Cessation in Women
- "Journal of Nutrition": Vitamin A Depletion Induced by Cigarette Smoke Is Associated with the Development of Emphysema in Rats
- "European Journal of Clinical Nutrition": Smoking, Dietary Calcium and Vitamin D Deficiency in Women: a Population-based Study
- Net Doctor: Smoking and Nutrition
