Smoking has always been bad but researchers found out recently its effects are amplified when a smoker starts puffing the moment he or she wakes up. In a study, these types of smokers are found to have higher levels of a tobacco carcinogen metabolite known as NNAL in their blood than those who abstain from smoking for about half an hour or more upon waking.
Steven Branstetter, Assistant Professor of Bio-Behavioral health, and his colleague Joshua Muscat, professor of Public Health Sciences, analyzed data provided by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey with 1,945 adult smokers who provided urine samples. They also answered some questions revealing their smoking behaviors and answer the question on how soon they smoke after they wake in the morning.
Based on data on hand, here’s what Branstetter and Muscat found:
- 32 percent of respondents take their first cigarette of the day, at least, within 5 minutes from the moment they opened their eyes.
- 31 percent started puffing their first stick within 6 to 30 minutes upon waking up.
- 18 percent smoked within 31 to 60 minutes from wake-up time.
- 19 percent started smoking 1 hour onwards.
While their study was still not conclusive, both believe the attitude towards the first stick of cigarette is more intimate for people who started smoking immediately upon waking up than those who do other things. Thus, more cigarette fragments are inhaled. They believe that the data they published on March 29th could somehow help prevent or minimize cases of lung and oral cancer resulting from excessive smoking.
Smokers are advised to take in food, fruits or juice upon waking up before they start their day-long puffing session. In that way, effects of cigarette substances taken into the body are minimized. But smokers are still urged to minimize their smoking habit until their body won’t crave for it anymore. One way to slowly veer away from it would be to use a portable vaporizer which is designed to help smokers quit the bad habit.
