Imagine this picture. Joe goes into the gym and works his heart out. Joe is 50 pounds overweight and he is determined to get this excess weight off. He seems to be one of the hardest working dudes in the gym. If exercise is not enough, Joe also has a whole bunch of supplements that he takes to facilitate his muscle growth. The most odd thing about Joe is you will most definitely find him outside the gym smoking after each exercise session.
I am totally amazed at people like “Smoking Joe”. It is an absolute oxymoron to spend all that time in the gym only to go out at the end of the workout to catch up on smoking. Why even bother with the workouts in the first place.
Apart from the numerous other health concerns attributed to smoking, research has now found that smoking gets in the way of building and maintaining muscle mass. A study on the effects of smoking on muscles was published in the American Journal of Physiology by Michael Rennie (Professor of Clinical Physiology) and Dr Philip Atherton (Research Fellow) both of whom were from the university’s School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health at Derby.
The researchers found that smoking accelerated the muscle wasting disease known as sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is the gradual deterioration of muscle mass that results in a hunched posture and frail frame. In advanced stages of sarcopenia, so much of muscle is lost that a person become prone to falling. Balance is severely compromised. This leads to other complications like thigh and hip fractures.
The study consisted of a total of 16 men and women in their mid sixties. They were selected on the basis of having similar lifestyles in terms of alcohol consumption and extent of physical activity. All participants were healthy and without any signs of lung disease. The group was divided equally into two of which one group consisted of heavy smokers, who had smoked at least a pack of 20 cigarettes a day for at least 20 years. The other group was off-course made up of non-smokers.
Dr Philip Atherton said: “From our tests, we can conclude that smoking impairs the day to day upkeep of muscle”. In other words, the body’s ability to build new muscles and to maintain any existing muscles is going to be compromised.
Someone should tell “Smoking Joe” that any muscles built in the gym are probably going to end up in smoke. “Smoking Joe “ should just forget about building new muscles and instead be thankful if he can even maintain what he already has. Bear in mind that this not only relates to men but also women. The only way to have correct and sustainable weight loss is losing fat and building muscles. Doing it any other way would result in rebound weight gain. As such, every ounce of muscle is valuable and we should do all that we can to hold on to what we have and build on it.
Tags: cigarettes, muscle loss, sarcopenia, weight loss, building muscles, American Journal of Physiology, Michael Rennie, Philip Atherton
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