Ciggarettes and fitness

[Sean Dunston]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Yoon

Dunno...seems to work for the Tarahuamara in the Copper Canyons.

shhh... don't ruin it for me... I'm only in the middle of the book!

[Wyatt Fairchild]

Originally Posted by Doug Blankenship

If you can go all day without one, then stop smoking them all together.

See, I smoke less than that. I Smoke 1-2 cigaretts a week on Monday nights for about 5 years. and i havn't smoked any more than that at any point.
Every monday my wife and I go to my sisters house for dinner and hang time. I have one cigarette with her when I'm over there. We sit outside, chat, have a beer or two, along with one or two cigarettes.
I am certainly not addicted. I don't even think about it all through the week. If I drink beer at another point in the week, I don't smoke with it.

But theres just something relaxing about sitting on her back patio, with a beer and a cigarette in hand, talking about life.

I've been crossfitting for 5 months, and am still setting PR's on everything I've done. I've been terrible at running over the past several years. But I'm beating times I set years and years ago when i was a high school soccer player.

So As of right now I see no need to quit. Those 2 or 3 hours a week at my sis' house are some of my favorite times. But can i quit? Yes, I've gone without smoking for a couple months when, due to her surgery she wasn't able to have us over on a regular schedule.

And I will quit at some point, when I start seeing a decline on the amount of PRs i'm setting, and I can tell that it is slowing me down.
But for now i'll stick to it.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

They were doing studies are commercial cigarettes, not hand rolled tobacco. Thats like comparing hotdogs to steak and saying both are meat.

[Frank E Morel]

Originally Posted by Jamie J. Skibicki

They were doing studies are commercial cigarettes, not hand rolled tobacco. Thats like comparing hotdogs to steak and saying both are meat.

No jamie, all tobacco is treated the same before it goes off to the different manufacturers. I used to heavily invest in cig companies.. then i found scrubbles. Oil comes out of the ground, but once it arrives to refinery its given a different run, for different markets.

Unless you grow your own smoke, its chemical ridden from day one.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

"Scrubbles"

What?

From anecdotal evidence (fiends who smoked hand rolled tobacco and feel great and then feel like complete *** after smoking one commercial cigarette) and from smoking tobacco through a hooka with no ill affects (and I smoke that maybe twice a year) I think the tobacco companies are doing something else to the cigarettes.

[Frank E Morel]

"Scrubbles"

What?

scrupples... oops


From anecdotal evidence (fiends who smoked hand rolled tobacco and feel great and then feel like complete *** after smoking one commercial cigarette) and from smoking tobacco through a hooka with no ill affects (and I smoke that maybe twice a year) I think the tobacco companies are doing something else to the cigarettes.

OH no doubt that they putting something else in the tobacco... but that is a "trade secret" hand rolled stuff just doesnt have the quantities of chemicals in it.. it still has them but not to the extend. decaf coffee vs reg coffee. decaff has caffeine in it.. but no where near the reg.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

"OH no doubt that they putting something else in the tobacco... but that is a "trade secret" hand rolled stuff just doesnt have the quantities of chemicals in it.. it still has them but not to the extend. decaf coffee vs reg coffee. decaff has caffeine in it.. but no where near the reg."

THis is my contention, that the amount of additives the tobacco companies add do a significant more amount of damage than the tobacco itself. I doubt you will see any studies on this since the "smoking is bad" movement is based on moral principles as it is on science and the tobacco companies would do their best to make sure the results never saw the light of day if it showed that "fresh" tobacco was safer.

[Benjamin Hill]

This is probably a good place to ask this. What about smokeless tobacco? I've been trying to quit tobacco overall, with a couple successes, in which I've been off for a couple months. It's always that 1 cigarette, or that 1 pinch of dip that sends me back into the cycle. Regardless, I am back in the cycle now, and I've finally gotten off a very few rough weeks, in which I was smoking, because I didn't want to dip again. I went from only smoking while I drink, to about a pack/day within a few weeks. So far, I've quit the smoking. I hate the smell, hate the taste, and I hate the feeling I get during WOD's. On the other hand, I've picked up dipping again. I don't do straight dip anymore, and I alternate between pouches, and snus, which is basically a more refined tobacco in a smaller pouch. At my point I think it's the lesser of 2 evils, but I'm interested to see the relation of nicotine to performance. Obviously dip can cause gum disease, mouth cancer, and all the other goodies that come from it, but how badly does nicotine in itself treat your body?

[Jason Peacock]

Some generic but very useful advice for all questions of this type:

Change something, but continue doing everything else the same, for 30days. Then determine if your performance improved or not and whether the improvement is worth it for the change that you made.

Do 5-6 cigs a week affect your performance? Stop smoking for 30 days and see what happens. What about alcohol? Same answer. Ditto for smokeless tobacco, paleo, zone, fish oil, dairy, ice cream, VFF, sleeping more/less, etc.

Everyone's body is different, we all get varying amounts of feedback from our actions. The only way to get a true answer is to try it and see what happens.

Scientific method FTW!

[Michael Henry]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaughnessy

Please respect my ability to make informed decisions of my own behalf.

My question is, if I was to have a single, 100% additive free all natural tobacco cigarette along with a soothing cup of valerian tea 5-6 nights a week, what effect would that have on my health and ability to perform? Google tells me that smoking effects recovery and healing time, do you think my 5-6 a week would cause noticable harm, assuming that my diet is in check and I do cardio regularly?

Thank you.

Do you want to quit? If everyone on this board says the cons outweigh the pros, are you going to stop? If not, then it doesn't really matter huh?

Who relies on your performance? Is the whatever % of performance you won't be able to achieve preventing you from something, or are you happy with where you are?

It's your body. You don't need us to help you make a decision, as your opening line tells us.