Walking, raw food diet may help teens quit smoking

Thursday, March 20, 2014 by: Antonia
Tags: raw food, quit smoking, walking

(NaturalNews) No surprise here: daily exercise has been shown to have health benefits from reducing stress and lowering blood pressure to preventing deep vein thrombosis (DVT). It's also a given that a healthy diet is essential to overall wellness.

However, studies also show that exercise, even minimal amounts of it, also has another huge benefit: it can help young smokers cut back on their habit and possibly even stop altogether. As for diets, it's thought that there's a correlation between foods eaten and the body's ability to rid itself of the acquired taste of nicotine.

Exercise and the smoking connection in teenagers

The exercise/smoking-reduction connection was reported in the Journal of Adolescent Health, noting that even just a little bit of exercise daily might lead teenagers to stop the harmful habit.

The article detailed a study that involved 233 West Virginian high school students who smoked, on average, a half a pack daily on weekdays and a full pack every day on the weekends. For many teenagers, "Smoking and physical inactivity . . . often goes hand in hand," says study lead author Kimberly Horn, associate dean for research at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

But when teens in the study were divided up into groups, it was found that the group who increased their daily physical activity by engaging in something as simple as an easy, 20 minute walk, "significantly reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked." Even more promising, the physically active students were also more inclined to engage in smoking cessation programs.

"This study adds to evidence suggesting that exercise can help teenagers who are trying to quit smoking," Horn said. Hopefully, the study results take hold throughout the nation since statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are unsettling. The CDC notes that "If smoking persists at the current rate among youth in this country, 5.6 million of today's Americans younger than 18 years of age are projected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness."

The importance of a healthy diet to help quit smoking

There have also been reports that people may be able to lose their taste for nicotine if they engage in a cleansing diet. The thought is that an organic, raw, vegan diet, which brings the body back to its natural tendency to rid toxic substances, can reduce the craving for cigarettes. Furthermore, eating healthy, crunchy foods like nuts and cruciferous vegetables can also satisfy the oral fixation that many smokers face.

Ways to encourage healthier eating habits include living by example by eating organic foods in the presence of others andkeeping a home stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/

http://www.livestrong.com

About the author:
A science enthusiast with a keen interest in health nutrition, Antonia has been intensely researching various dieting routines for several years now, weighing their highs and their lows, to bring readers the most interesting info and news in the field. While she is very excited about a high raw diet, she likes to keep a fair and balanced approach towards non-raw methods of food preparation as well. >>> Click here to see more by Antonia