Exercising Can Help Keep You Smoke-Free
The most important strategy in remaining free from smoking is to put an exercise component into your life. The major benefits of exercise are these:
1. Exercise brings a true, natural, and sustained high.
2. Exercise gives relief from tension, a benefit smokers falsely think they get from cigarettes.
3. Exercise decreases neuromuscular tension and increases relaxation.
4. Aerobic exercise slows and even reverses the aging process.
5. The exercised heart pumps more blood with each stroke, so this efficiency saves 20 million superfluous heartbeats per year.
6. Exercise offers a long-term reduction of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
7. Exercise dilates blood vessels, allowing blood to circulate freely to the hands, feet, and surface areas of the body. (Most smokers complain of cold hands and feet.)
8. Exercise can prevent the potential weight gain connected with breaking free of cigarettes.
9. You can develop a healthy addiction to exercise, which will be manifested in many positive changes in addition to losing interest in cigarettes.