Smoking and sports: running helps to quit

Despite the obvious incompatibility of smoking with sports such as running, swimming or bicycling, questions about this topic are not getting any fewer.

Indeed, smoking and sports are as incompatible as can be. And a reasonable person understands this very well. But despite their reasonableness, not everyone is able to stop killing themselves in one day.

Smoking is not harmful to humans, it is fatal. But it may take different time to understand this fact. Some for 5 years, some for 20… It depends on the stamina of the body, but the end is always the same. And it’s always quite painful, there are no exceptions.

Compensation for smoking by sport

Unfortunately, running and other sports can in no way compensate for cigarette poisoning, no matter what anyone tells you. Smoking cannot be compensated for in any way. This is a pure myth.

You can’t do active sports and smoke at the same time. Even when we say that if you smoke, you should take maximum time between smoking and working out. We say this only to those who have chosen sports to fight nicotine, not to those who are going to sit in two chairs at the same time.

Running against smoking

Running or cycling are great tools that don’t just help you quit smoking. They replace that addiction. Fortunately, no effort is needed to make the intervals between cigarette breaks longer. After a normal run for at least a couple of hours, the very thought of a cigarette is repulsive. The body demands water and replenishment of nutrients. This feeling will be stronger than the craving for a cigarette.

After sports, the craving for smoking, which has settled in the mind for many years, is not able to cope with the protective properties of the body, so it recedes a bit.

Unfortunately, it does not retreat for long. As soon as the body recovers, the mind remembers that something has been missing for a long time and starts suggesting a little smoke break. But it should be noted that we are dealing with the mind, not with the terrible force of addiction, which all smokers are so afraid of.

Seize the moment.

If you haven’t had your fill of cigarettes or don’t know the whole truth about them because you’re young or lack information, you’re unlikely to stop smoking. After all, you have no reason to do so yet. But a mature and sensible person, who has long ago realized what he has gotten himself into and how many years of his life have already been ruined by smoking, is given a great chance to change something. Before it is too late.

By “late,” we do not mean the “device” dysfunction that has become common in men who smoke, but something much more serious.

One comes to realize that after running, cigarettes have been absent from one’s life for a much longer time than usual. Moreover, it does not cause any physical or psychological discomfort. It allows one to truly relax. A person is energized with unprecedented energy, which allows him to take the next final step and throw the deadly habit far away.

Instant effect is achieved when a person wants to change everything radically. His whole way of life. Especially if he sees running, cycling or any other cyclic sport as his future healthy hobby to replace his current unhealthy one. Once he has received enough information about what smoking, especially in combination with alcohol, can do, he is left in no doubt as to the correctness of his decision.

As a rule, in this case, cigarettes are a thing of the past after two or three workouts. Moreover, it will be very easy for a person to last two or three days after the last cigarette until the barely perceptible addiction leaves the body altogether.

That is the transition to freedom

After a week, the habit of going out right after a meal to inhale the poisonous smoke is completely gone. And after a month, when you run past people smoking on the street, you occasionally think, “…strange, but I used to smoke, too! If I had known before that there really was no addiction…”

The Illusion of Dependence

In reality, addiction to smoking, like addiction to alcohol, is very illusory. If it were possible to turn off the mind completely, the body itself would never get intoxicated again, even on autopilot. Despite the fact that you have been doing this to it for several years in a row.

The body has not become addicted to it in the slightest. On the contrary, for a long time it has been trying to develop some kind of immunity against the expansion of deadly substances. True, this immunity, unfortunately, one day will not withstand the pressure and will fail. But then it gradually gets used to the smoke and suppresses coughs and spasms. In other words, it suppresses the body’s natural defensive reaction against poisoning.

This, of course, is not even a semblance of immunity anymore. For there is no protection whatsoever. On the contrary, it is resignation to daily destruction. The immune system, as such, is subject to almost complete weakening to the point of destruction. At the same time it easily opens holes for all deadly (and not so deadly) diseases.

When is it too late to stop smoking?

Poison is not incorporated into any chemical processes – this is another myth created to sell Band-Aids and other nonsense.

We do not, of course, take into account such chemical and biological processes in which it plays a major role. For example, the formation of various types of malignant tumors and the development of cancer cells anywhere in the body. In this case, there really is no substitute for cigarettes.

Virtually all young or old people without arms or legs (unless it’s the result of an accident), have lost limbs because of smoking. There are thousands of times more of them than you think, you just don’t see them because they don’t go anywhere else.

You may not like to think about it, but due to the obliteration of the vessels in one single puff, an irreversible process can begin. Its direct consequence is two possibilities: death from blood poisoning or amputation. And, for some, it’s the same thing. That will be the moment when you tell yourself: “It’s too late”. To be more precise, the surgeon will tell you.

Until then, the wise words “stop before it’s too late” have absolutely no perception. This is unfortunate and, unfortunately, you are then unlikely to be here to read news about running or triathlons, delicious food or beautiful places to go to train. We don’t think you need to list them all. Better yet, have you started to feel occasional tingling in your feet or hands, slight numbness in your fingers, or other similar sensations?

Why It’s Impossible to Quit

What’s so magical about a magical cigarette that it’s impossible to quit smoking? Or are you just drowning in a world of fakery and illusion?

One hour after smoking a cigarette, the smoker feels the active process of withdrawal of nicotine from the body, which provokes the replenishment of the poison by smoking the next cigarette.

However, if such a feeling is artificially reproduced in the body of a person who has never smoked, he either won’t even notice it or won’t pay much attention to it. Or he would confuse it with a little hunger. But he won’t be bothered by it at all. And, of course, no thoughts of a cigarette can arise in him. And after a couple of days, that strange slight feeling disappears without a trace.

Who and what will be worried about in this case? Who might want to smoke, and how is withdrawal syndrome even involved?

Think about it seriously. And look at things realistically: where would your “terrible physical dependence” and “infernal agony of weaning” be if from that second on you simply didn’t know about the existence of any cigarettes at all? Let’s say you hit your head and forgot they existed? Selective amnesia, so to speak.

You wouldn’t even notice that you have some kind of withdrawal syndrome. It really is. But it doesn’t benefit anybody. Everyone from the tobacco companies to the manufacturers of nicotine patches, inhalers, vapes, and other nonsense is disadvantaged. Which, by the way, a healthy person looks at with complete incomprehension.

Especially when a bunch of people gather and start creating entire clubs, websites, and accounts devoted to how, with what, and through which place it is better to smoke. The conversations about which poison tastes better look especially good from the outside. Tastier? Are you serious? Isn’t that bordering on schizophrenic? How atrophied the receptors must be and how dysfunctional the brain must be to confuse the sensations created by nature in order to survive…

Imagine yourself as a non-smoker.

If you stop killing yourself today and in a couple of days, or better yet, in a week, you catch cigarette smoke in your nose, the illusion of “taste” is instantly dispelled. After all, your attitude toward cigarettes is starting to form right. Or you will want to smoke even more, if you still do not understand anything. In the second case, it is better to reread this article twice. Or three times.

There is no doubt that by creating certain circumstances it is possible to make a person feel differently about the same product. Even if that product is a blatantly deadly poison, it doesn’t matter. Given the enormous budgets of the tobacco companies and the time that has been spent zombifying the world’s population in relatively honest ways, it is no wonder that you can’t imagine your life without cigarettes.

It’s because you don’t belong to yourself anymore. And now you work for the tobacco factories. And you will work for them, even if your children don’t have enough to eat or go to school.

You are the fortunate result of the competent investment of non-smoking tycoons.

Old-school medicine may preach other arguments that leave smokers with no psychological chance of quitting. But the more advanced members of the profession certainly consider the cognitive. They play a decisive role in quitting smoking.

Cigarette paradox

In the long-term absence of cigarettes, the smoker has a slight sensation of lack of something due to the removal of the poison from the body. But it is reinforced by nothing more than thinking that connects it with the need to smoke. And by reasoning that “I’m a smoker, I’m addicted, it’s impossible without a cigarette”, etc., the mind winds up the situation, the pressure grows like a snowball and finally collapses on the poor head of the “addicted” person in an avalanche. Then without a moment’s hesitation he grabs a cigarette.

Since the mind, accustomed to this practice, has had its fill, it can now begin to justify this action with the standard excuses of a smoker.

The result is a paradox. The body eliminates the poison and lets the symptoms show that it is still successfully coping with it and can be healed. And the person, happy that he can take a new portion of the poison, immediately takes up the cause and takes another cigarette.

It is a vicious circle that leads intelligent and healthy people to degradation, desolation, and perpetual depression. At the same time it brings them down to the lowest level of evolution.

All people whose lives are owned by alcohol or cigarettes are still slaves to cunning pesticides for one simple reason: no one has ever told them that nothing needs to be quit and no addiction exists in their minds except in their minds. On the contrary, the only thing smokers hear is that quitting smoking, if at all possible, is very difficult and only for a select few.

You have to go beyond what is not

In fact, one should not so exalt the finely sliced and rolled up pieces of paper that have claimed more lives than all the wars of the world and continue to do so every five seconds one person at a time. Yes, yes, there is no tobacco in cigarettes for a long time. They are soaked in a disgusting brown chemical slurry that contains everything you need to kill you. But not too fast. You still have time to make a profit.

How can you pay so much attention to anything you don’t understand? Look at it more broadly, go beyond it. There’s nothing to quit. Cigarettes don’t even deserve that expression, because it implies some action, some movement, some effort. There’s nothing to put effort into, there’s nothing to quit. It’s simply the same as stopping looking at the sun during the day so that your eyes stop hurting from the bright light.

If you didn’t read carefully, we’ll repeat: two or three days after the last cigarette you smoked, the physical craving recedes almost completely. Even up to that point, it is barely perceptible. If it seems to you that this is not the case, the only place to look for the cause of “suffering” is in the mind.

No withdrawal syndromes were observed

There is a small caveat. Many of us runners, cyclists, and triathletes, including our foreign friends, used to smoke, too. And they drank, too. All of the above is the absolute truth based on experience.

The nuance is that each of us certainly wanted a complete change in our lifestyle. And exercise immediately replaced cigarettes. It cannot be ruled out that perhaps it was because of running, cycling, triathlon, and a long-standing desire to lead a full healthy life that the complete rejection of cigarettes and alcohol came so easily to everyone.

No one had any nicotine withdrawal syndrome (let alone alcohol), unpleasant feelings, etc. Or maybe everyone just didn’t care about it. After all, we were enjoying life, smells, tastes of food, our own breathing and body movements. Suddenly everything became interesting. We were children again. But now sensible children. And, of course, healthy.

The body clears itself pretty quickly. And with it the brain from different illusions. If after a couple of weeks of training, during which a person did not drink or smoke at all, he tries, for example, a sip of beer, it will seem to be a terrible sourness, not to mention cigarette smoke. But it used to be actually a part of life, and maybe even the meaning of life.

But you don’t have to keep trying the poison and trying to understand why you couldn’t live without it before. You are completely free of it, and you see the world in completely different colors. So why start all over again?

I’m about to quit.

Don’t think that your “infatuation” with alcohol and cigarettes is temporary, and then you will quit. You just don’t see the point where it’s too late to change.

The problem is that all of the neural connections that make you experience the imaginary pleasure eventually strengthen and grow into other neural connections that reinforce the illusion. But in reality, it is only a withdrawal, mostly psychological. It is not difficult to guess that later it will be more and more difficult to weaken and break these neural connections. Up to the moment when it becomes impossible due to partial loss of self-consciousness.

Unfortunately, both alcohol and cigarettes mount a powerful attack on all one hundred billion neurons of the brain. But, as luck would have it, the most resilient ones are those that are responsible for all signal transmissions related to the use of the drug poison. All the rest just die out when they are not needed. That is why quitting drinking or smoking is out of the question for the alcoholics.

The danger is that even moderate drinkers and smokers experience exactly the same effects of intoxication. And there is no transition from one stage to the other. This process happens smoothly, so it is very difficult to suspect danger. But as long as the functions of self-awareness and introspection are still functioning, anyone can quit drinking and smoking without any effort. Simply because there is nothing to quit.

What are your plans for the future?

Have a riot on your own ship. Become head and shoulders above the rest, you have a great tool – your mind. Would you allow anyone to tell you that killing your body and brain in your prime is the norm of life? By continuing to drink and smoke, you continue to work not for yourself, but for the manufacturers of cigarettes and alcohol. At the same time you get in return a gorgeous depression, absolute insecurity and a quite predictable future.

Are you lonely? Throw out your cigarettes, take out your sneakers and run around the most beautiful places in the city. Instantly everything will be fixed. After all, you now have a huge advantage with the opposite sex.

No money for running shoes? The last five to ten beers were probably comparable in cost to normal beginner sneakers.

Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day? So you could have bought good marathon sneakers in a month.

It’s likely that for most of us, personal, family life and success with the opposite sex are not the least of our concerns. Healthy men and women with beautiful, athletic bodies that don’t exude the horrible smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol tend to look at an addict with a sense of regret if they do.

Even if he is good-looking (still), it is a regret that he kills his own beauty. Certainly they have no desire to wake up next to a walking ashtray or a body that exudes excessive alcohol. And speaking of healthy offspring in the light of this article does not seem normal at all.

Remember, 98% of addiction is a work of the mind, not a mythical physical craving. You don’t even have to think about it. The only ones who muddy the waters are those who were not really going to quit, or who didn’t understand anything. As well as bought “doctors” who sell their miracle Band-Aids, filled with the same poison that you are trying to get rid of.

When you become a non-smoker, you become enlightened.

If you smoke and drink now, but can imagine for a second what you want to be like tomorrow. And how bright the world around you will be when you stop using poison, you’re halfway there.

All that remains is to see the illusory nature of your addictions to nicotine or alcohol, and to see the end stage of life if you continue in the same way. If it is difficult to imagine it, then to reinforce your decision, you can watch relevant videos about the harms of smoking and alcohol on Youtube. It is better to watch the overseas versions, because they are more revealing and picturesque.

As a runner we know from Stockholm, a former smoker with more than 25 years of smoking and who later won a couple of marathons, once said, “Smoking does have one bright side: if I had never smoked, I would never know how happy a non-smoker can be.

The conscious cessation of the process of self-destruction can probably be compared to spiritual enlightenment. Nothing changes, but everything is completely new. In general, it is also impossible to put into words. So step into your new world yourself and enjoy it.