Health
Encouraging teenagers not only to quit smoking but also to become more physically active increases the chances that they will quit smoking.
The study looked at the effects of exercise in a smoking cessation program in adolescents.
The American Lung Association's “No Tobacco” program found that approximately 21 percent of adolescents quit smoking.
The idea for the new study was partly the result of findings from other studies, which claimed that exercise helps adult smokers quit smoking, possibly because it moderates symptoms of abstinence from smoking and weaken the strong urge to smoke.
Kimberly Horn, a researcher at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, says that smoking rates are high in West Virginia, the US where the study was conducted, while while physical activity levels are low.
A team of scientists involved 19 high schools, offering a standard smoking cessation program, the same program plus exercise tips or a “short-term intervention” where teenagers were offered one session with an assistant teacher or coach who knew the program. All 233 students participated in three programs.
Exercise helps boys more
The standard program offers 10 weekly small group sessions in which an assistant helps teenagers understand why they smoke and find a way to quit the habit.
Teenagers participating in the second program were offered exercise in addition to the program, and were offered a pedometer to monitor their activity levels.
After six months, the group that advised exercise had the highest rate of quitting smoking — 31 percent. In the standard group, 21 percent of students quit smoking, while in the short-term intervention group, only 16 percent quit the habit.
The researchers also found that exercise helped mainly boys. Among boys participating in this version of the program, 37 percent quit smoking after 6 months, compared to 18 percent of those who participated in the regular program. At the same time, for girls, this percentage was almost the same in both groups: 26% and 23%, respectively.
The reason for these differences is still unclear and researchers are slightly puzzled by these results.
It is known that girls' physical activity levels fall during adolescence, while boys are more likely to remain active. Scientists suggest that girls may experience more barriers to physical training.
Exercise has additional benefits
In the future, researchers plan to monitor whether the program actually helps increase activity levels in children and find out whether the type of exercise used to quit matters smoke.
The results of the study are encouraging, as exercise is fairly easy to introduce into existing programs, and even small doses of exercise have a positive effect. Also, even after children stop smoking, exercise will have additional health benefits.