Exercise helps smokers quit

MEDICAL TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

For women trying to kick the smoking habit, adding regular exercise to the attempt might boost their chances for success, researchers report. Since fear of weight gain is one of the biggest obstacles in getting women to give up smoking, researchers led by Bess Marcus of Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, R.I., investigated whether working out would help quitters remain abstinent.

MARCUS' team divided 281 sedentary female smokers into two groups: one group followed a 12-week smoking-cessation program, while the other followed the program plus a three-times-weekly exercise regimen.

The researchers found that the exercisers were twice as likely to quit smoking and to remain smoke-free for a year. By the end of treatment, about 19 percent of exercisers were smoke-free, compared with 10 percent of women who participated only in the cessation support group. A year later, 12 percent of the exercisers were still abstinent, compared with 5 percent of the inactive women. The findings appear in the June 14 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. While the exercisers gained less weight during the study than did the non-active subjects, this advantage did not hold up.

Three months after the program ended, their weight gain closely matched that of the other group. Still, Marcus pointed out in an interview, the weight gains were modest. By the end of the 12-week program, the exercisers had gained, on average, less than seven pounds; women who remained sedentary gained an average of 12 pounds. Three months later, exercisers were about 10 pounds heavier than they were before the study, while the inactive women were 13 pounds heavier, on average. The exercisers, Marcus noted, failed to keep up their activities, which explains the post-program pounds. "A lot of women 1/8in the exercise group 3/8 were disappointed because they expected to lose weight during the study," Marcus said. But one of the reasons women and men gain weight when they retire their lighters is that they lose the metabolism-boosting effects of nicotine. Quitters often also start eating more, Marcus said, but this calorie upswing usually lasts only for the first month or two of being smoke-free. Besides minimizing weight gain, exercise can ease the stress, depression and anxiety that go along with quitting smoking, according to Marcus. "Exercise helps," she said, "as long as you keep it up." What does not seem to help the quitting effort is dieting to avoid weight gain. In an editorial accompanying the report, Dr. Nancy A. Rigotti of Harvard Medical School in Boston noted that previous studies have shown that weight-management programs are ineffective and often counterproductive to smoking-cessation efforts. "Perhaps," she wrote, "it is just too much to ask a smoker to simultaneously limit both food intake and tobacco use." Marcus agreed, noting that this seems to be particularly true of women, who generally have a tougher time quitting than men. "For them," she said, "food has a comfort role, just like cigarettes." Rather than depriving themselves of food, Marcus added, smokers aiming to quit should make smarter food choices and add activity to their lives.