14 DAY TRIAL // Even if smoking rates in teenagers have dropped recently, a new study run by a team of researchers at the McGill University found that girls still use heavy smoking as a method to control their body weight. But medical experts caution that young girls should stop thinking that lighting up cigarette after cigarette is the appropriate technique to keep their body weight steady and prevent gaining weight.
Joanne DiNardo of the Ontario Lung Association warned that 'smoking slims' is a myth and female adolescents must learn that tobacco does not reduce their BMIs, it only affects their health and makes their life span shorter. Moreover, she added that the myth can be seen as a clever marketing technique used by companies in the tobacco industry to raise the number of buyers. She stated for CTV: "I think young people are very important to the tobacco industry, because eventually the people who currently smoke will not survive, and those smokers have to be replaced. Smoking isn't glamourous and the tobacco industry is actually duping you. They're out to get young people. Who else is going to replace all those smokers?"
The current study was conducted on 1,300 Montreal students by the McGill University team led by Igor Karp, researcher in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. When the study began, subjects were 12 or 13 years of age and the follow-up period of the research lasted for 5 years. Out of the volunteers in the study, 73% of the girls and 42% of the boys smoked.
Overall results of the study showed that girls who took up smoking did not lose weight and their height was not influenced either. Medical experts explained that smoking does not have any influence on girls' weight or height, because most female adolescents take up the bad habit after they have started puberty. On the other hand, this thing happens in the case of male teenagers, who mature slower and their growth is inhibited by regular tobacco inhaling.
What young girls should also know is the fact that smoking is harder on their health than on their male counterparts, making them more prone to all tobacco-related disorders and conditions. Louise Pilote who leads GENESIS (a research which looks at the sex and gender difference in cardiovascular diseases) cautioned: "There is an important public-health message here that we need to get to teenage girls: Smoking is not going to help you lose weight. The bottom line is that women have poorer cardiovascular outcomes. There is a big body of medical literature that tells us that, but very little that tells us why. We hope to change that."