There is little doubt that smoking is bad for your health, but you may not understand exactly how it affects you adversely during your daily routine.
Smoking while exercising affects your body in many ways, like reduction in your endurance levels, cardiac overload, oxygen deprivation, and impairment of gains.
Here are some facts about smoking while exercising:
- Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke impairs athletic performance.
- While exercise training can increase maximal oxygen uptake by up to 20%, smoking can reduce this effect by up to 10%.
- 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.
- Smoke inhalation has an immediate effect on respiration, increasing airway resistance and therefore reducing the amount of oxygen absorbed into the blood.
- Carbon monoxide in the blood also reduces the amount of oxygen that is released from the blood into the muscles.
- 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 bloodstream.
- Smoking also causes chronic swelling of the mucous membranes of the airways, which adds to airway resistance.
The Best Solution: Quit!