Smoking and Exercise

ngj387
ngj387 Posts: 1 Member
in Motivation and Support
I have been smoking for 15 years now. I’m 37 now. I have been working out - walking and running for 2.5 years now and have brought down all my stats- BMI, glucose, BP, cholesterol and most of the smoking and alcohol related parameters to “Ideal” or “perfect” numbers. I have been doing 10,000 steps continuously for close to 600 days now- running for about 45-50 mins per week, every week for about a year and a half. But I still smoke 10-12 cigarettes a day. Considering all the above - am i at risk to develop smoking related diseases in the next 15-20 years if I continue to smoke and keep the fitness related parameters in check.

Answers

  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,040 Member
    Exercise DOESN'T negate the risks of smoking. You still get tar in your lungs, you still elevate your blood pressure, you constrict capillaries and disengrate your lung air sacs.
    You'll be a FITTER smoker, but you're still at risk. Just quit. I smoked for 20 years and quit cold turkey. I've been smoke free for over 20 years now. Wish I NEVER started the habit because my fitness would be way better than now.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,679 Member
    You've improved your odds, but that's it . . . it's all about probabilities. No one can tell you that you've insured against negative effects of smoking because you smoke only a small-ish amount, plus work on your fitness. Think about this: There's evidence of bad health consequences for people who never smoked, but who lived with a smoker and got second-hand smoke.

    If smoking is important to you, and you're willing to accept a level of health risk to do it, that's your call. No one, not even an expert, will give you any accurate exact and reassuring answer about your personal case.

    I'd pretty much guarantee that it's having a negative effect on your athletic performance even now - and that can be true even if your performance is excellent.

    I was diagnosed with early COPD. My fitness device thinks my VO2max is "superior" for my demographic, after a couple of decades of training a short-endurance sport (on-water rowing). In my whole life, I've only ever smoked as many cigarettes as you smoke in 2 or 3 days, but lived with smokers my whole life.

    As a general observation, people do this: Keep some negative health habit that they know is negative, but do other things that they think might counterbalance, then want to think of those things as a sort of magic talisman that nothing bad will happen to them. It's not true. They may improve their odds, and that's good, but it's still a matter of reducing probability, not eliminating the possibility.

    If you can stop, you'll do your future health a favor . . . probably.

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