Thread: Does Pipesmoking Impair Athletic Performance?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I'd say it couldn't do you any good, and I've been smoking pipes for many years. I don't inhale the way cigarette smokers do, but I'm sure I'm inhaling some, even unintentionally. I'm far from an athelete, but I have lifted weights, do ride bicycles on and off road, and I'm active for a 65 year old. I can do a lot of aerobic stuff, but I'm sure I coudl do better if I didn't smoke at all. YMMV.

It would hinder swimming. back when I smoked I could swim (not FAST) with cigs.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Just throwing it out there - when I gave up smoking I used nicotine lozenges. You sit them in the side of your mouth and let them dissolve naturally (don't chew or suck them). I guess the nicotine in the tablets enters your body via the saliva.

So I'm thinking the nicotine in pipe tobacco, if you are not an inhaler, will still enter your body albeit perhaps in a less efficient manner than if you did inhale.

Whether nicotine impacts athletic performance is something I do not know. However, and I don't want to sound like a doomsayer or anything, I'm sure I've read that pipe smoking can lead to mouth (and related areas) cancers.

James.

I started smoking young. 12-13 years old. I smoked until I was 51. June 19 2001. that's the day the Doc. told me I had throat cancer. Now I smoked the old sack tobacco you rolled your own. went from there to ready rolls to cigars to pipe back to cigs and when I was you and over seas some of those cigs that was very small and pointed on both ends and made you feel real good. Now I'm 65 and still here. My 1st cousin who never smoked chewed dipped or drank ever died of cancer. You never can tell.

Moderate anything is okay. I get the feeling you don't really need the smoke just want to enjoy it once in awhile. If you start then I think you would notice the change while working out. If your afraid it will turn into a habit you have a hard time quitting then I would say just forget it.

Originally Posted by bill3152

Newsflash! Living is terminal! There aint a one of us getting out of here alive. Anyway, Im sure nicotine has adverse affects somehow. But again so does food, nuclear contamination, smog and maybe even stone swarf!

Like I used to say to my Motorcycle Rider friend years before he died, yes we are all on this Earth for a limited period of time. Just think of us all in a line waiting to see the big man but you don't have to sneak to the front.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

Moderate anything is okay. I get the feeling you don't really need the smoke just want to enjoy it once in awhile. If you start then I think you would notice the change while working out. If your afraid it will turn into a habit you have a hard time quitting then I would say just forget it.

I believe I have read that smoking is harder to quite than heroin. I may have the dope wrong but you get the idea. I know for me it took cancer to be able to quite and I had a heart attack a few years before the cancer. I know I tried to quite many times before and didn't. I guess it boils down to just what you want to do. when I started smoking a sack of tobacco was 10cents and they gave you the papers and matches. when I quite I think a pack of cigs was 2.00 or in that neighbor hood. now some say there 5.00 dollars. I was burning 3 packs a day. just think of all the razors I could have bought. The habit starts out slow and then it picks up speed. All this reminds me of when I was young and something would happen to someone I knew doing the same things I was doing and in my mind I would think it would never happen to me. and then it would. guess I better hush up. nothing worse that a reformed so and so. I know because I saw one of my old girl friends the other day. married 3 kids. acted like she didn't know me.

Unfortunately folks remember the good and forget the bad. Everyone knows the guy who smoked 3 packs of cigs a day since he was 14 and drank a fifth of whisky every day and lived to be 100 and never saw the inside of a hospital. They forget all the others who died of cancer at younger ages and those folks die by the droves.

One of the ironies resulting from the 1964 Surgeon General report on smoking was that pipe smokers live longer than non-smokers. A further irony is that they found that pipe smokers who quit smoking thus reduce their longevity, a counter-intuitive finding. Of course, this does not mean that pipe smoking is literally good for health, but the lifestyle that accompanies it is more contemplative and healthy than a normal lifestyle. The finding that pipe smokers who had quit had lesser longevity was linked to the fact that they quit smoking pipes because of a health problem, possibly not pipe smoking related.

My father smoked cigs from 15 to 40. Quit the cigs and smoked pipes until he passed away at 84. Not smoking related. He smoked a pipe, a lot, and up until the week that he took sick and died.

I would not smoke a pipe if I was pole vaulting. Otherwise, if you avoid inhalation, I think you'll be just fine with a pipe on the back porch every now and then. Avoid burley tobacco. It has alot of nicotine.

Originally Posted by MisterMoo

I would not smoke a pipe if I was pole vaulting. Otherwise, if you avoid inhalation, I think you'll be just fine with a pipe on the back porch every now and then. Avoid burley tobacco. It has alot of nicotine.

I avoid burly women... whether they smoke, or not.