Smoking

Tobacco

I’ve never been a regular smoker. I did smoke on occasion in high school and a little bit afterwards, but was never addicted. It was mostly hanging out with smokers in high school and then at the bar after graduation. When I met my wife when I was 21 her influence cut smoking out of my life pretty much completely. As a result, I don’t have personal experience with the addiction to and withdrawal from tobacco.

Still, I think I can take a stab at this.

If you recall from Chapter 3, smoking has a very negative impact on life expectancy, not to mention a host of other nasty side effects. Health Canada asserts that smokers are at an increased risk for:

“Coronary heart disease (e.g., heart attacks)
Peripheral vascular disease (circulatory problems)
Aortic aneurysm
High blood pressure
High cholesterol (LDL)
Lung cancer
Cancer of the mouth, throat and voice box
Cancer of the pancreas
Cancer of the kidney, and urinary bladder
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Chronic bronchitis
Emphysema
Pneumonia
Influenza (the "flu")
The common cold
Peptic ulcers
Chronic bowel disease (Crohn's Disease)
Tooth decay (cavities)
Gum disease
Osteoporosis
Sleep problems (falling asleep inappropriately and/or frequent waking)
Cataracts
Thyroid disease (Grave's Disease)”¹

You know you have to quit, right? I haven’t met a single smoker who doesn’t want to quit. I probably don’t have to convince you of this, but I don’t think you have to quit before you start exercising. If you make the decision that you must quit smoking first, then what happens if you never quit? If you’ve struggled time and again with quitting then set that goal aside for a while and just start exercising. It won’t kill you. Believe it or not there are many physically active smokers.

And like I’ve examined in earlier chapters, becoming a regular exerciser builds your willpower; willpower that can be used for things like improving diet and quitting smoking.

When you’re ready to quit, talk to your doctor. There are good options now for helping you, including:

Support groups / counseling
Nicotine replacement therapies
The antidepressant drug Bupropion (Zyban)
The nicotine receptor partial agonist Varenicline (Chantix)

There are other unproven therapies such as acupuncture, laser therapy and hypnosis, but my advice is to try the proven ones first.

Marijuana

More and more information is coming out about this stuff not being as harmless as once thought. It can have negative effects on your brain, not to mention your lungs. Remember that it’s still smoke. You inhale it deeply and hold it in so you can get a better buzz. This burns the airways and can make aerobic activity more difficult. I should also mention that, like anabolic steroids, it is against the law.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana can have the following harmful health effects:

Increased likelihood of anxiety, depression and schizophrenia
An abusers risk of heart attack more than quadruples in the first hour after smoking marijuana because it increases heart rate and blood pressure and it decreasing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood.
Not only is it an irritant to the lungs, it’s carcinogenic as well, containing 50-70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco. This is further exacerbated by the manner in which pot is smoked, with deep inhalations that are held in longer.
The Institute referenced one study which reported that: “…heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including physical and mental health, cognitive abilities, social life, and career status.”²

Even if you only use it on rare occasions, imagine this scenario: it’s Saturday afternoon and the wife took the kids out somewhere and you’ve got the house to yourself for a couple of hours. You look at two separate courses of action:

1. Go for a nice long run then come back home and eat something healthy and watch some TV.

2. Smoke a big fattie, then order pizza, down a few beers, and watch some TV.

Which one better helps you achieve your fitness goals?

With pot the more you smoke it the worse off you’ll be. Less is better, and none at all is best.

Go to Summary of Phase 1

Screw that, Go Directly to Phase 2

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Notes