The Domino Effect of Smoking
J.D. Stanfield doesn’t cook. When he is hungry, he wants something fast and convenient, which normally means a trip to McDonald’s or Burger King.
Stanfield, Hutchinson senior, also cannot have a beer without a cigarette. He said the habit started three years ago and smoking and drinking go hand-in-hand.
“When you start drinking, it’s nice to have a cigarette,” he said.
For Stanfield and other college students alike, these are a group of lifestyle choices that tend to cluster together, a recent article published in the "Journal of the American College of Nutrition” found.
The study, a part of the Monitoring University Students Tackling Diabetes and Obesity (MUST-DO) was conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas. The study surveyed 300 KU students and discovered that smoking was related to a number of poor health behaviors, including eating high-calorie foods, eating while watching television and decreased physical activity. The more students smoked, the more likely they were to engage in unhealthy behaviors.
Shawna Carroll, graduate student and originator of the smoking study, said the relationship between the number of cigarettes smoked per day in relation to the amount of fast-food consumed was surprising.
Shawna Carroll, who originated the smoking study, found a relationship between the number of cigarettes smoked each day and the amount of fast food consumed and/or T.V. watched.
“The results themselves shocked me,” said Carroll, who began the study thinking many students smoked as a means to maintain weight and to suppress the appetite. But, in reality, the results indicated the opposite. Students who smoked three cigarettes per day on average ate at restaurants serving burgers about 50 times a year. In contrast, those students who smoked 40 cigarettes per day made a fast-food run nearly 90 times each year.
Dr. Myra Strother, staff physician at Watkins Health Center, who also contributed to the MUST-DO study, said the research suggests that physicians will now have to address all of a student’s behaviors. She said that doctors cannot just say to their patients, “Don’t smoke,” because of the domino effect that will occur later on. Students push the present into the back of their minds, she said, and tend to think about these issues when they turn 40, 50 or 60.
“It’s not just a matter of smoking while in college and saying you will quit eventually,” she said. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’ll get healthy someday.’ It’s all starting right now and we need to address it.”
Carroll and Strother said one key to fighting poor lifestyle behaviors was to target the pivotal period of development that occurs during the first few years away from home. Carroll said students often rebel throughout this period, and this is where most life-time habits are probably set. For example, a previous study in 2004 by Dr. Karen Saules from Eastern Michigan University reported that as many as half of self-reported adult smokers indicated they initiated smoking during their college years.
“We know that college students experiment,” Carroll said. “Depending on how you were raised, it could be easier to rebel with a bag of Doritos than an illegal substance.”
Such was the case for Stanfield, who as a wrestler in high school, he often had to watch his weight. He ate plenty of fruits and vegetables to maintain his weight class, but in college, he said he gets to eat what he wants when he wants.
Strother said physicians need to let 17 to 23 year olds know that just because they choose poor health habits now, they are not locked into an unhealthy lifestyle. She said it is easier to point out bad habits early, and the younger the student is, the more willing they are to change.
Another difficult issue to address, Strother said, is that physicians are relunctant to mention weight and smoking issues with their patients. She said that by ignoring the problem, they are allowing students to become comfortable in their lifestyle choices, which could develop into diseases such as lung cancer, emphysema and diabetes. Strother related smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet as no different than any other illness that prompts a visit to the doctor.
“If you come in frequently to be treated for a cold, and I am not asking you questions about smoking or if you are getting enough sleep, then I am not doing my job,” she said.
Blue green algae, pictured here at Cheney Lake near Wichita, produces geosmin, a non-toxic chemical. Geosmin is responsible for adding a foul taste and smell to drinking water.
Microscopic cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, thrive in shallow water, as shown here in Cheney Lake.