Fat smokers beware
It has been common but unproven knowledge for quite some time that people who have given up smoking have found that they put on weight – but how far the two effects are related was always a little in doubt, since the role played by normal middle-age spread was difficult to evaluate. The true position has now been cleared up in an experiment carried out by J. Brozek and A. Keys at the University of Minnesota in the US.
They persuaded a group of normal middle-aged men whose weight they had followed for some years to give up smoking. They then matched each abstainer with a smoker who had the same physique and general background. Over the course of two years they discovered that those who smoked put on only a very small amount of weight, while those that had given up increased by more than 9 pounds above their average weight as measured in the two years before they gave up smoking.
This seems to provide clear-cut proof that there is a tendency to put on weight after giving up smoking, and the increase persists for at least two years and probably longer.
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The researchers suggest the reason is that smoking depresses the desire to eat and so counteracts the instincts of the glutton. Smoking is also known to inhibit contraction of the stomach due to hunger. Because obesity is harmful and undoubtedly decreases the expectation of life in middle-aged people, those who give up smoking face an unexpected new hazard.
It may well be that the benefit that people secure by reducing their liability to lung cancer is subsequently wiped out by the alternative harm of becoming overweight. So pity the unfortunate tobacco addict. If they happen to be on the stout side, they must steel themselves to not only smoke less but also to diet. It is, it seems, an increasingly hard life.
From The New ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´, 1 August 1957