Smoking and Stress Relief

One thing that I tend to hear smokers say about why they smoke is because they find that smoking gives them stress relief.

The argument could also be made that overeating, doing illegal drugs, or a variety of other unhealthy activities that people do could also be used as stress relief (however temporary that relief feels).

There’s a new study out that says quitting smoking might actually REDUCE a person’s stress level.

The researchers in this study recruited:

469 smokers who had been hospitalized for a heart attack or heart bypass surgery. While the patients were still in the hospital, they completed surveys on their perceived stress levels and smoking habits. All said they were motivated to quit and had agreed to take part in a clinical trial of in-hospital smoking-cessation counseling.

The vast majority of the participants (85 percent) thought that smoking helped them deal with stress, on the initial survey they took, with 50 percent saying that smoking “very much” helped them cope with stress.

A year after the initial survey was given, 41 percent of the participants had remained smoke free.

As for the overall findings:

On average, Hajek and his colleagues found, the abstainers showed a 20 percent reduction in their reported stress levels, while patients who had gone back to smoking showed little change in their perceived stress.

The relationship between abstinence and reduced stress held up when the researchers accounted for factors such as patients' age and education, how heavily they had smoked before quitting, and how high their stress scores had been at the start of the study.

According to the researchers, it’s the simple matter that being dependent on smoking cigarettes is itself a source of stress.

So someone who smokes 20 cigarettes per day, for example, essentially goes through 20 bouts of stress each day, as the levels of nicotine in the body decline. Once that person quits -- and gets over the initial period of withdrawal -- he will have 20 fewer periods of stress each day, Hajek said.

So in other words, chances are, you aren’t stressed because of stressful things going on in your life, you’re stressed because…you aren’t smoking on a cigarette.

As I said, I think other habits could like overeating can definitely have this same effect.

You eat, not necessarily because you’re hungry, but because there’s a stress after awhile of NOT eating.

I think there could be a positive spin on this though.

I know with myself, if I go three days without exercising, I tend to be incredibly low on energy and somewhat stressed. But then all it takes is one workout and then it clicks in my head “yup, that’s all I needed to get back on track.”

So if you’re looking for a habit that will not only relieve stress, but won’t be a harmful burden on your body like what smoking and overeating can do, go out and get a little bit of exercise. Take a walk, a run, lift some weights, etc. You don’t need too much. Thirty minutes a day is a good starting point and I think you’ll be amazed how well physically and mentally you’ll feel after you continue to do it on a regular basis.

www.leanbodytraining.com
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