14 DAY TRIAL // People do many stupid things just to look thin. A new research found that teenage girls who are dieting are two times more prone to start smoking regularly as girls who are not dieting.
The study made on 7,795 adolescents found that with boys, cigarette availability rather than weight loss is the main factor determining them to smoke.
"We were expecting that the relationship between dieting and smoking was going to be stronger among females. Our findings were consistent with previous studies examining the relationship between dieting behaviors and smoking initiation." said lead author Dr. Mildred Maldonado-Molina, of the University of Florida, College of Medicine.
Previous researches showed that body weight issues often make people start smoking or not try quitting because of the cigarettes' effect on the weight control.
The team employed data gathered from a national school-based research that took place between April 1994 and August 1996.
The body mass index (BMI) of the white and African-American adolescents in grades seven through 12 was employed to assess if students were overweight. The students were asked if they were fighting the extra-pounds, if they could easily get cigarettes at home from smoking parents, if they had smoked for the first time within the time frame of the research or if they were already regular smokers, with at least one cigarette daily for a month.
Female teens trying to get slim were 1.94 times more likely to start regularly smoking than non-dieting teens and male teens who did not bother with the body weight were more prone to smoking if cigarettes were available at home. While relatively more males (30.3 %) were overweight compared with females (20.6 %), more females (55 %) were dieting than males (24 %).
"These findings are consistent with societal pressures for females to be thin and to diet," said Maldonado-Molina. "Since nicotine raises metabolism and thus the potential to lose weight, teens might perceive that 'benefit' to be an influencing factor in the decision to start smoking," said Claire Mullins, vice president of communications at the American Lung Association of Maryland.
"Parents who smoke contribute a great deal to their children starting smoking."