Smoking makes Smokers Fat – a More Effective Deterrent

Smoking makes smokers fat, especially in teenagers, is more effective deterrent than when is telling that smoking is the risk of heart disease and cancer. Finnish researchers found that smoking during adolescence strongly predicted the development of abdominal obesity in adulthood, among both men and women. They found also that girls who smoked at least 10 cigarettes daily during adolescence had a 3.4-centimeter larger waistline as young adults have.

In general smoking during adolescence increased a woman's odds of being heavy later in life, not just having a large waistline. Dr. Suoma E. Saarni, from University of Helsinki, told Reuters Health that smoking in adolescence seems to predispose the smoker to a large waistline, independent of health habits and parents body weight. The apparent link between smoking during adolescence and being heavy later on was independent of the young person's own body weight, meaning that those who were heavy smokers had greater waist circumference even within the same body mass index (BMI) levels as their non-smokers peers, added Saarmi.

This research gives a tool to highlight the risks of smoking to adolescents and young adults by showing the unhealthy effect on the body shape. This can be an important deterrent, because usually young people find cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes or even cancer so distant risks that they have very little impact on ones smoking behavior.