SWIMMING AND SMOKING

Smoking is the single most important factor leading to disease and premature death in North America. An estimated 550,000 people die each year in the United States as a direct result of smoking. Indeed, according to a 1992 study published in the journal Lancet, smoking causes fully one fifth of all deaths in the developed world. It is also entirely controllable: although nicotine is highly addictive, ultimately a person can quit and thereby add years to his or her life.

Fortunately, smoking is one of the factors that seems to be most affected by swimming. If you look back at the life-expectancy test (item 26), you will see that smoking can be the single greatest factor in shortening your life: if you smoke two or more packs of cigarettes a day, you are likely to live twelve years less than if you didn’t smoke; if you smoke “only” a pack or so a day, you can figure on dying seven years early.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, educational programs to reduce smoking have yielded good news. Since 1980 the proportion of the adult population that smokes has declined from 36 to 26 percent. Still, that leaves well over 40 million people puffing away.

The Perrier study found no significant differences in smoking habits between those who exercise and those who don’t.

However, two studies I conducted indicate that swimming and smoking do not mix. Most Masters swimmers never smoked, and of those who did, most dropped the habit entirely.

At the 1991 National Masters Swimming Championships in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, I asked a sample of 162 competitors—83 men and 79 women—about their smoking habits. On average, the men in my survey had been swimming in the Masters program for about six years, the women a bit under five. About 27 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women indicated they had smoked before they began swimming—slightly below what was then the national average. By 1991 smoking among this group had disappeared almost entirely: only 5 percent of the women and barely 1 percent of the men (only one individual) reported that they were still smoking. What is more, those few who did still smoke were smoking less. The results of this study are summarized in Table 5.2.

All things considered, Masters swimming appears to be bad news for the tobacco companies.

Exactly how swimming works to reduce smoking is not known: it may be physiological, psychological, or a combination of the two. However, it does seem to work, as Lynda Myers found out. This should be welcome news for the millions of smokers who have struggled in vain to break their habit. One forty-two-year-old stockbroker, a former college football player, summed up the experience of many swimmers: “I didn’t particularly try to stop smoking when I started swimming. I hurt my knee in college, and for me swimming was just a way to help keep my weight down without putting stress on my knee. But after a few months, I just didn’t seem to need to smoke anymore. I’d find myself reaching in my pocket for a pack out of habit and then catch myself and think, Hey, what am I doing this for? Why should I destroy my lungs? That was that. No withdrawal pains—nothing. Oh, sure, every once in a while I still feel an urge to take a puff, but now it’s something I can control. I feel a whole lot better now that I’ve stopped smoking. Hey, if swimming helped me to lick this thing, that’s just great. It’s one more thing it’s got going for it.”