Whenever you see models puffing away on their Marlboro Lights or even school girls sneaking a cigarette, the excuse more often than not is that it helps them lose weight either by suppressing their appetite or speeding up their metabolism. But does smoking really increase your metabolic rate and enables you to control our weight more easily?

Some studies have shown that smoking does indeed increase our basal metabolic rate – the rate at which calories are burned by the body each day as it takes care of essential functions such as the rhythm of the heart, breathing, digestion, thoughts and movement.

Around 60-75% of our daily calorie expenditure can be accounted for by basic bodily functions and experts believe that one way smoking raises metabolic rate is by stimulating the nervous system to produce catecholamines – hormones which cause the heart to beat faster, thus making the body burn more calories. Nicotine also produces more thermogenesis, the process by which the body produces heat. This too, causes the body to use up more calories.

Some research suggests that the increase in metabolic rate during smoking could equate to smokers burning up to 200 extra calories a day more than non-smokers.

Examining all the evidence together it would seem that each cigarette smoked will contribute to a temporary increase in the metabolic rate and that the more you smoke, the higher a proportion of the time you will be experiencing this faster running metabolism. But does this actually help you control your weight more easily?

Many believe that smoking suppresses the appetite and that smokers eat less than non-smokers. In fact, most studies comparing the calorie intake of smokers and non-smokers show that smokers actually eat as much or more than non-smokers. The reason they are sometimes able to manage their weight more easily is not that they eat less but rather that they burn off more of the calories consumed due to their metabolism running faster when they smoke.

The increase in metabolism while smoking may also explain why some people gain weight when they quit. It is true that many ex-smokers reach for more food than they are used to just to fill the gaps created by not using cigarettes, but even those who maintain a steady amount of food will run the risk of increasing in weight due to the fact that their metabolism is now running at normal speed for most of the time now rather than being artificially boosted by smoking.

So, rather than smokers being their ‘normal’ weight when they smoke and then gaining weight when they stop, it may be more accurate to say that smokers may be artificially slim while they are smokers and then they return to what is a more natural weight when their metabolism is allowed to regulate itself without interference from nicotine. Longer term studies comparing people who smoke for a period and then give up with people who never smoke show little difference in weight gain at the conclusion of the studies though those who smoke experience periods of being thinner.

Having said all that, smoking does not rank highly as a weight management strategy. Exercise and healthy eating will guarantee you positive results in this area by speeding up your metabolism but without any of the potentially fatal and critical negatives such as lung cancer, emphysema, leg amputation, heart disease, clots in the lung, stroke, infertility……the list goes one. And of course, shortened life span.

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Research found that smoking-related death occurs everywhere in the world for about every 8 seconds, every year. As soon as we remove the blinders and look very carefully about nicotine addiction and the damage that it can cause, the sooner we can pull away from dangerous effects and be safe. Health Alert do provides us with in depth look at such topics about health and medicine in current time. Many people that are currently using tobacco or smoking products, joined the millions of smokers who participated in the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smoke-out program, just simply by agreeing to stop smoking for a 24-hour period of time.

This is an event wherein the people who joined the single event were transformed into a “former smoker” and now they are lead to the way to a healthier lifestyle for the twenty-first century. The consequences of using tobacco are the following. You will have a greater chance of getting lung cancer, 10 times greater than a nonsmoker. You have a greater chance of having heart attack, twice than non-smokers do. Cigarette smokers have a chance of being linked with emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Tobacco or smoke contains almost 4,000 chemicals in it. Many of these chemicals are poisonous and almost 40 of them are linked to cancer. Smoking pregnant women have their increased risk of having a low birth weight infant or stillborn baby.

Cigarette smoke is more harmful and very bad to people who inhale it, especially those who does not smoke. Children living in a house with smokers are twice as likely to pick up and imitate the habit when they grow up. In quitting the smoking habit you must develop a plan to take control of your addiction. Pick a day when to stop smoking. You can do it every November, during the Great American Smoke-out, there are millions of other Americans will stop smoking too that will also inspire you. Tell some one in your family and also your friends about your plan so that they can remind you time to time. Because you will also need their encouragement when you feel the urge in smoking again. Quitting smoking is not that hard it is just your discipline that will help you more.

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As smokers, we don’t think about the chemicals in cigarettes. We think about how cigarettes help us cope with the stress of daily life, how they calm us down when we’re angry, help us relax at the end of a long day, comfort us when we’re sad or lonely. Harmful chemicals in cigarettes? No, we don’t think much about that.

The truth of the matter is that smoking does the opposite of just about everything we give it credit for. When the chemicals in cigarettes are inhaled, they put our bodies into a state of physical stress by sending literally thousands of poisons, toxic metals and carcinogens coursing through our bloodstream with every puff we take. And those chemicals affect everything from blood pressure and pulse rate to the health of our organs and immune system.

While researchers are still working to uncover all of the hazards cigarettes present to human life, we do know that air tainted with cigarette smoke is dangerous for anyone who breathes it — smoker or not.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the harmful chemicals in cigarettes and how they affect our health.
Chemicals in Cigarettes: Carcinogens
A carcinogen is defined as any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer. Approximately 60 of the chemicals in cigarettes are known to cause cancer.

TSNAs
Tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (TSNAs) are known to be some of the most potent carcinogens present in smokeless tobacco, snuff and tobacco smoke.

Benzene
Benzene can be found in pesticides and gasoline. It is present in high levels in cigarette smoke and accounts for half of all human exposure to this hazardous chemical.

Pesticides
Pesticides are used on our lawns and gardens, and inhaled into our lungs via cigarette smoke.

Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is a chemical used to preserve dead bodies, and is responsible for some of the nose, throat and eye irritation smokers experience when breathing in cigarette smoke.

Chemicals in Cigarettes: Toxic Metals
Toxic / heavy metals are metals and metal compounds that have the potential to harm our health when absorbed or inhaled. In very small amounts, some of these metals support life, but when taken in large amounts, can become toxic.

Arsenic
Commonly used in rat poison, arsenic finds its way into cigarette smoke through some of the pesticides that are used in tobacco farming.

Cadmium
Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal that is used in batteries. Smokers typically have twice as much cadmium in their bodies as nonsmokers.

Chemicals in Cigarettes: Poisons
Poison is defined as any substance that, when introduced to a living organism, causes severe physical distress or death. Science has discovered approximately 200 poisonous gases in cigarette smoke.

Ammonia
Ammonia compounds are commonly used in cleaning products and fertilizers. Ammonia is also used to boost the impact of nicotine in manufactured cigarettes.

Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide is present in car exhaust and is lethal in very large amounts. Cigarette smoke can contain high levels of carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen Cyanide
Hydrogen cyanide was used to kill people in the gas chambers in Nazi Germany during World War II. It can be found in cigarette smoke.

Nicotine
Nicotine is a poison used in pesticides and is the addictive element in cigarettes.
A Word About Secondhand Smoke
Also known as environmental tobacco smoke, secondhand smoke is a term used to describe cigarette smoke that comes from two sources: Smoke that is exhaled by the smoker (mainstream smoke) and smoke produced by a smouldering cigarette (sidestream smoke). Secondhand smoke is known to contain at least 250 toxic chemicals, including 50 cancer-causing chemicals. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. That means if you can smell cigarette smoke in the air, it could be harming your health.

If you smoke…
…use the tools below to help you get started on your smoke-free journey. There is no time like the present to stop the madness that cigarette smoking is. You’ll be rewarded with benefits beyond what you can probably imagine and they’ll start to occur faster than you think. Within 20 minutes of your last cigarette, your body will begin to heal and improvements to your mental and physical health will continue to grow with time invested in smoking cessation.

It is never too late to quit smoking!