Smoking cigarettes is a habit that has affected millions of people worldwide. It is a habit that is continually affecting everyone, and that includes athletes. Cigarette may be acceptable in our society and considered as a past time, nevertheless it can affect the performances of athletes.
If you are an athlete and you think that smoking can help you relax before or after a game then you are mistaken. Yes, some individuals may find smoking comforting and relaxing, but do not be fooled even for a bit that smoking has good benefit aside from the fact that it can help you relax. Smoking increases the airway resistance. The poisonous substances that get accumulated within the body after smoking a single cigarette, take 24 hours to clear from the system. If you smoke more than one cigarette each day, the body doesn’t get ample time to remove the toxins and toxins start getting accumulated within your body leading to health problems like cilia damage and throat cancer.
The athletes train and build-up their endurance and strength to make them more competitive even under all stressful conditions. Therefore, if athletes smoke then their performance will deteriorate as they tend to use more energy just to breathe properly.
Keep in mind that one of the negative impacts of smoking is a week lung. As you continually smoke then you slowly destroy or fill your lungs with bad elements that in turn affect your oxygen intake. Since you are an athlete you will definitely need a good amount of oxygen to function properly and to become healthy. There will be less endurance and less oxygen capacity. The tar present in the smoke covers the lungs and the athletes find it difficult to breathe especially when they are training. Apart from this, Carbon Monoxide from cigarette also damages the lungs and has detrimental effects on the performance.
Yet another problem with smoking is that it slows down the process of healing knee ligament injuries as it hinders the employment of cells to the injury site. Apart from that if you perform Kraus-Webber test on the smoking athletes, you will see that their muscle strength and flexibility of some muscles have decreased significantly as compared to that of non-smoking athletes.
At first, smoking cigarettes is deemed as cool and hip by everyone, and that most smokers even today feel that they will be more socially acceptable if they will smoke like other people do. However, now it is no longer just a matter of becoming the coolest person in the school, or the most influential man in your group as smoking is considered as dangerous to smoker’s health and the people that are around them. So whether you are a teacher, pianist or athlete, once you smoke cigarette, it can affect your health.
The benefit of smoking does not compensate for the negative impact that it can bring to the smokers health. Most people only knew that smoking is dangerous, but what they do not know is the extent of the damage that smoking can do to their health.