Smoking hurts your BRAIN & Exercise Doubles Quitting Success...

Today's post: Tuesday, 6-10-2008

Smoking harms your brain too.

As we’ve posted here before, some people who smoke get cancer; but everyone who smokes loses breathing capacity enough to measure & begins to get heart & cardiovascular disease & lose good circulation of their blood.

In addition, many people who smoke don’t do regular exercise either.

So, it would seem likely that with less oxygen, less blood flow, & less new brain cells from the effects of exercise smokers gradually would be prone to some mental decline as they continue to smoke.

It seems that has recently been verified as happening !!

Here are the key facts from yesterday’s news story on this.:

“Smoking hurts mind as well as body: study

Mon Jun 9, 2008 4:12 PM ET CHICAGO (Reuters) –

Middle-aged adults who smoke tended to perform poorly on tests of memory and reasoning compared to nonsmokers, adding to the list of reasons not to smoke, French researchers said on Monday.

Analyzing previously collected data on about 5,000 British civil servants, the researchers found those who smoked were more likely than people who never smoked to be in the lowest-performing of five groups in tests of memory, reasoning, vocabulary and verbal fluency.

Smoking was associated with mental decline in middle age, as it is with dementia and a host of physical ills later in life, they found.

"Smoking in middle age is associated with memory deficit and decline in reasoning abilities," concluded Severine Sabia and colleagues from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Villejuif, France.”

The authors point out that people who quit smoking also tend to do better on other things that produce good health including eating right & exercising.

They also pointed out that it was harder to test the smokers after several years had passed as many of them had died & many of the remaining ones declined to participate the second time.

These facts have two implications.

For most jobs, employers will get employees more likely to think well, stay alive, & be cooperative if they only hire nonsmokers.

And, if you smoke, you are much more likely to keep your thinking abilities intact & more likely to get hired for jobs when you need them if you quit smoking.

That’s in addition to cutting your risk of cancer somewhat, & dramatically slashing your risk of heart attacks, strokes, erectile dysfunction, & peripheral artery disease AND of dying early.

In a separate online health article I read in the last week or so, was that:

People who do or begin doing regular exercise when they try to quit smoking had DOUBLE the success rate of the people who didn’t exercise.

In addition, those who gained weight after quitting & exercised only gained half as much as the people who gained weight and did NOT exercise.

This dramatic effect on quitting success is NOT at all well known.

But it clearly has these two causes I think.

1. The people who have the strongest motivation to take charge of their health and proactively stay healthy are those who are most likely to also exercise & the most likely to quit smoking.

So the people who do exercise AND try to quit smoking start out as more motivated.

2. People often smoke or keep smoking because it has some anti-depressant and some stress relieving components. Some even smoke as they get temporary improvement in mental concentration.

Exercise has each of those 3 effects. Many studies show it relieves depression, often as well or better than anti-depressant drugs. Exercise & the related deep breathing while exercising work to relieve stress. And, people who exercise DO think & concentrate better.

So the people who do exercise AND try to quit are getting a good bit of what smoking used to do for them WITHOUT needing to get these things from smoking.

So it’s then EASIER to quit smoking for the people who try to quit AND exercise.

And, I think the reason that the improvement in the success rate is so large, is because BOTH of these causes help produce it.

So, if you are trying to quit, here are 3 things to use.:

1. Realize it protects your memory & ability to think to quit -- in addition to everything else quitting does for you.

2. Begin thinking of yourself as someone who is proactively taking steps to protect & keep your good health.

3. And, be SURE to include regular exercise as part of your quitting effort.

(Even a few 10 minute walks each week or a few pushups when you get stressed will help. Just keep doing it.)