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Especially with the New Year in mind, many people resolve to stay away from cigarettes in the future. It could be helpful to regularly integrate brisk walks into your everyday life. This is indicated by a study that tested a small group of smokers under which conditions they felt less craving for the next cigarette. Ten minutes of brisk walking in the fresh air were particularly effective. Indoor exercise on a treadmill had a similar, albeit somewhat weaker, effect.
Smoking is one of the most important preventable causes of illness and death. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, more than 127,000 people die in Germany every year as a result of smoking. Although tobacco consumption is declining slightly, around 23 percent of adults still smoke. Many people make a New Year's resolution not to touch cigarettes again in the future. To prevent addiction from ruining your good intentions, there are various tools available, from replacement products to lifestyle tips.
Fast walking against addiction
Previous studies have suggested that even moderate exercise can alleviate addiction symptoms. As a rule, only indoor exercise units were used. A team led by Stefanie Schöttl from the University of Innsbruck has now compared the effects of indoor and outdoor exercise on addictive pressure. The test subjects were 16 smokers who stated that they usually smoked at least ten cigarettes a day.
For the experiments, the researchers asked their test subjects not to light a cigarette in the ten hours before the experiment. Since all experiments were conducted in the morning, this meant no smoking overnight. On three different days, participants completed one of three 10-minute programs: they went for a brisk walk outdoors, ran at a similar pace indoors on a treadmill, or simply sat around. Before and after, they answered questionnaires about their cravings, possible withdrawal symptoms and their general well-being. After the experiment, they also reported how much time passed before they lit their next cigarette.
Short-term effects
The result: “Compared to ten minutes of sitting, brisk walking significantly reduced cravings for cigarettes during and after the intervention,” reports the research team. “In addition, the test subjects reported improved emotional well-being after the exercise sessions.” However, the effects of the intervention in the current study were not particularly long-lasting. Just 20 minutes after the exercise session, the test subjects reported a similarly high desire for cigarettes as without the exercise - if they had not already lit the next cigarette by then.
But even if the effects were short-lived, the results suggest that exercise in the fresh air has advantages over indoor exercise or sitting still. At least immediately after the intervention, the desire for cigarettes was reduced the most in the outdoor group. “Another – although not significant – difference between indoor and outdoor exercise units is the time that passes until the next cigarette,” reports Stefanie Schöttl. For both the indoor group and the sedentary control group, this time was an average of 17 minutes. In the outdoor group, however, it took an average of 26 minutes until the next cigarette.
“This is a tendency that still needs to be checked in further experiments,” says Martin Kopp, “possibly with changed duration or intensity of the units.” It is important to the research team that the exercise units are easy to incorporate into everyday life. “The interventions should be defined in such a way that they can be integrated one-to-one into smoking cessation programs,” say the researchers. Further studies with a larger number of test subjects should clarify what is particularly effective.
Source: Stefanie Schöttl (University of Innsbruck) et al., Psychopharmacology, doi: 10.1007/s00213-023-06506-4