Smoking Cigarettes and Running Circles

We’ll all die, some sooner, some later and some who’ve lost hope, are walking dead, just waiting for it to end. 

But a minuscule segment of humans besotted with the endurance lifestyle, are heading out there and grabbing life by the balls during training and racing. Every hour of training and racing is an hour spent wisely. But some of us endurance addicts are naughty and like to smoke. We walk that fine line between self-care and self-destruction, and we walk it hard, putting logic and rationality to shame, but always regretting. Regret, ah regret, it’s a hobby, so human, so useless, yet so essential for maintaining our charades.

If you smoke and exercise, then the research paper mentioned below can lessen your regret since as per it, smokers (who engage in aerobic or endurance exercise) are at par with non-smokers (who engage in aerobic or endurance exercise) when it comes to arterial stiffness. 

Does Aerobic Exercise Mitigate the Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Arterial Stiffness? (J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2014 Sep;16(9):640-4. doi: 10.1111/jch.12385. Epub 2014 Aug 18.)

Smoking affects the cardiovascular system through arterial stiffness and causes deaths. The research paper above postulates and demonstrates in a limited way that “regular participation in physical activity may mitigate the adverse effects of smoking on the vasculature”. 

This means that if you exercise and smoke then your arteries will not become stiff and you can maintain your arterial health (very surprisingly) quite similar to a non-smoker who exercises.

Hunter S. Thompson -- usual profundity

Before delving deeper into the study, a few limitations as declared in the study are:

a. The number of participants studied is low (sample size total = n = 78).

b. It is a cross sectional study and not a longitudinal study. This means that the researchers studied data from only a particular point in time and they did not follow up the data from the past and future.

c. The groups into which the participants were divided were not well matched.

Now, details of the study which are relevant to smokers who exercise:

a. The smoking + exercise group (S+E Group) in the study had been smoking 8-10 cigarettes per day for at least 2 years. Such smoking is categorized as “light” smoking medically;

b. S+E Group was running or cycling for more than or equal to 2hrs per week.

The researchers measured arterial stiffness of Sedentary Nonsmokers, Sedentary Smokers, Active Nonsmokers and Active Smokers. They found that there was no significant group difference for arterial stiffness between Active Nonsmokers and Active Smokers. Win, win!

My observations for the study mentioned above:

1. Active smokers meant those who engage in running or cycling for more than or equal to 2hrs per week. This is a little hard to interpret since such time in hours does not clarify how many kilometers per week and intensity level of running and cycling is required to maintain arterial health if you smoke. I’d assume that 2hrs per week of running would mean at least a weekly running mileage of about 24kms per week, and for cycling it would mean at least 50kms per week. But cycling is easier on the body and if we apply the 1:4 formula to convert (easy) running effort to (easy) cycling effort then to maintain arterial health, a smoker would have to cycle at least 96 kms per week.

2. If you smoke marijuana in a joint form then this study needs to be interpreted carefully since the amount of tar and other particulate matter in a marijuana joint is a lot more than the 8-10 “light” cigarette smoking mentioned in the study. In fact, I remember reading elsewhere that the particulate matter inhaled from 1 marijuana joint can be equated to an entire pack of cigarettes. So, for a marijuana smoker who exercises, the arterial stiffness may be more as compared to a light smoker (8-10 cigarettes per day).

3. Smokers who exercise can maintain arterial health like non-smokers who exercise, but exercise can’t save you from the carcinogenic effects of cigarettes. If you’re unlucky (genetically or otherwise), then cancer is still coming, no matter how healthy and supple your arteries may be. If you exercise, then you may not get a heart attack due to smoking but you may still get cancer. Well, exercise may protect you from cancer too upto a certain extent since exercise induces autophagy, but that is a separate topic in itself.

Go ahead, enjoy a few, quit if you can, if you can’t then exercise more, regret less because we’ll all die soon. As Charles Bukowski said, “Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.”

- Aman Yadav