Smoke, spit tobacco affect fitness

Smoking reduces fitness and athletic performance, but so can oral tobacco use. If you smoke or use tobacco products of any kind, you are not going to be able to run as fast or as far, lift as much weight, run back and forth on a basketball court, or even walk up and down stairs as easy as your fellow Sailors who are tobacco free.

Even young smokers 18-25 years old suffer from shortness of breath almost three times as often as those who do not smoke. Breath is something an athlete or anyone trying to exercise cannot afford to be short of.

A smoker's heart has to work much harder than that of a non-smoker. So in competition, your body wastes a lot more energy just trying to keep up with non-smokers.

The major effects of smoking on the body's respiratory and circulatory system are as follows:

High levels of carbon monoxide from smoking reduce the amount of oxygen absorbed into the blood from the lungs.

Carbon monoxide in the blood also reduces the amount of oxygen that is released from the blood into the muscles.

Smoke inhalation has an immediate effect on respiration, increasing airways resistance and therefore reducing the amount of oxygen absorbed into the blood.

Smoking causes chronic (or long- term) swelling of mucous membranes, which also leads to increased airways resistance.

Smoking increases the heart rate for a given level of exercise.

Carbon monoxide, the same gas which is released by motor vehicle exhausts, is present in cigarette smoke and is absorbed rapidly into the bloodstream. The mechanisms by which it does this are as follows:

Once it leaves the lungs via the air sacs, oxygen is transported in the blood by attaching to the hemoglobin within red blood cells. Carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke also binds to hemoglobin, which blocks the amount of oxygen that can enter the blood. Therefore, the level of oxygen in the blood decreases. This has a significant effect on the heart and other muscle cells where there is a high demand for oxygen.

Blood levels of carbon monoxide from smoking can also produce distortions of time perception, psychomotor and visual impairment and negative effects on cognitive skill.

Oxygen is important for the functioning of all energy systems in the body, so any mechanism which interferes with oxygen transport and uptake interferes with energy production and therefore sports performance and the ability to do physical work, even something as simple as walking up a stairway.

Inhaling cigarette smoke results in airway resistance (narrowing of air passages) in a number of ways:

Inhalation of smoke from a cigarette can, within seconds, cause a two to three fold increase in airway resistance.

Smoking also causes chronic swelling of the mucous membranes of the airways, which adds to airways resistance.

When demand for oxygen is elevated, such as during exercise or physical work, this increased resistance is more noticeable. Reduced lung capacity can cause a smaller volume of oxygen to reach the alveoli (lungs air sacs), resulting in impaired gas exchange and less oxygen in the blood.

The tar in cigarette smoke adds to airway resistance. This tar coats the lungs, reducing the elasticity of the air sacs and resulting in the absorption of less oxygen into the blood stream.

Tar also affects the cleansing mechanism of the lungs, allowing pollutants to remain in the bronchial tubes and lungs. Increased phlegm and coughing, and damage to the cilia (the hair-like projections which "sweep" pollutants out of the airways) are the result.

The combined effect of carbon monoxide and increased airways resistance causes the heart to work harder in an attempt to compensate for the lack of oxygen reaching the muscles.

The nicotine in cigarette smoke also acts as a stimulant, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure, and decreasing the flow of blood through the blood vessels.

Smoking reduces physical endurance and impedes the improvement in physical performance in smokers compared with non-smokers. If you smoke you cannot get into shape! It also increases fatigue during and after exercise. Research into the effects of smoking on physical performance has found the following:

While exercise training can increase maximal oxygen uptake by up to 20 percent, smoking can reduce this effect by up to 10 percent.

In a recent study adolescents who had smoked for five days had an 8 percent reduction in endurance time. Individuals who smoke are also less likely to continue in exercise programs.

A U.S. study of more than 3,000 naval personnel found smoking was detrimental to physical fitness even among relatively young, fit individuals. The study also found smokers have lower physical endurance than non or ex-smokers.

Exposure to second hand tobacco smoke either before or during an event also impairs athletic performance.

Research also shows that cigarette smoking and oral tobacco use damages cells in the testes - the cells that synthesize testosterone. Testosterone levels within the body govern the muscle growth process from training. Thus, smoking hinders optimal testosterone production and interferes with the body's capacity to build muscle.

Recent research shows nicotine in spit tobacco reduces an individual's ability to perform complex tasks that require hand and body movements to adjust to new visual feedback. During a visual-motor task, smokeless tobacco users exhibited slower learning and adjustment to new requirements, more jerks, slower and more irregular movements, and less accurate overall performance compared to non-users.

"Our results suggest that tobacco use on the job can reduce an individual's capability to learn new visual-motor mapping and adapt his or her performance to new visual feedback," said lead author Jose Contreras-Vidal, Ph.D., University of Maryland Department of Kinesiology.

National "Through with Chew Week" is Feb. 17-23 and Feb. 21 is the "Great American Spit Out" day. If you are a snuff or other type of oral tobacco user and you have considered quitting this would be a good time to "quit the spit."

If you really want to get fit, then quit the dip as well as the smoking tobacco. Your Navy Wellness Center provides all of the materials and tools you need to quit, you just have to make it happen! Call us today for more details at 542-5292 or 542-2836.