Saturday, June 23, 2012

A Runner Who Smokes?

Roger Smith sets a digital scale on the floor of his Teaneck apartment. Then he takes two gentle steps on top of it.

The 5-foot-10 Smith weighs a feathery 143.4 pounds this morning. If he goes running later, that number may drip down closer to 140.

By some measures, Smith is one of the healthiest 50-year-old men in Teaneck. He walks 1.69 miles to work in the morning, spends most of his day collecting shopping carts, and then walks 1.69 miles home. At night, he visits the gym or goes running. His diet is Spartan. He doesn't watch television.

By other measures, Smith may be one of the unhealthiest 50-year-old men in Teaneck. He wears a $38 pair of Adidas running shoes to accommodate his $400-a-month cigarette addiction. Smith smokes three packs a day. A glass ashtray in his fourth-floor apartment holds at least a dozen cigarette butts, most of which were stubbed out earlier this morning.

Smith may be a portrait in paradoxical behavior, but he is not the only runner who shares these contradictory addictions. A July poll on the Runner's World's Web site found that 6 percent of runners currently smoke. Smith is part of that class — runners who suck toxins into their lungs one cigarette at a time, then try to expunge those toxins one distance run at a time.

"I started smoking when I was 18," Smith said. "I can honestly say it was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I'm 50 now, so that makes it more than 32 years."

Unapologetic about his habit, Smith is not looking to quit. He tried once in his early 20s, made it about two weeks before he needed a smoke. Now the longest he can go is a day or two, and only when his cash supply runs dry.

Pulmonologists cringe when they hear that an otherwise healthy middle-aged man has been lured into the addicting arms of nicotine. Any doctor can draw you a flow chart that illustrates the connection between smoking and premature death. The heart and lungs, two organs that athletes depend on, are two of the major organs affected by a smoking habit.

"Running if you smoke is better than not running when you smoke," said Dr. John Penek, a pulmonologist at Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pompton Plains. "I guess in some ways it would allow them to be more vigilant in terms of the development of symptoms with associated respiratory problems."

Penek tells his patients that all smokers eventually stop, "one way or the other."

"If one stops smoking, it takes about 10 years for the individual to have his risk of lung cancer decreased to a non-smoker level," Penek said. "The reason it takes so long is that tumors take a long time to grow. They start off as one cell, then two, then four, then eight, then 16. … When one stops smoking, within a few months your risk for cardiovascular disease disappears."

Smith has no desire to drop either habit — the running or the smoking. He started running in 1997, when he moved to Bergen County. He started training and entered two 5K races.

He still has the race numbers at his apartment. He ran a 22:13 at a 5K in Maywood and a 23:24 at a 5K in Ridgewood. Both times he beat more than two-thirds of the field.

"I had enough time to smoke a cigarette [after the race], and still more runners were coming in," Smith said.

Smith does not light up during his runs and puts his nicotine fix on hold for 30 minutes before each run. ("And God's honest truth, it does take some effort," Smith said.) On days when he runs on a treadmill, he likes to program the machine to 10 miles per hour and see how long he can run before his legs and lungs beg for a slower pace.

But the second he leaves the gym …

"As I'm grabbing the doorknob, I have my cigarette lighter in my other hand," he said.

Smith has no idea if he is at risk. He has not been to a doctor in more than a decade — a major no-no, according to Dr. Hormoz Ashtyani, a pulmonologist at Hackensack University Medical Center. Pairing the art of running with the act of smoking can lead some people to underestimate medical problems.

"Like an iceberg, most of it is under the [surface]," Ashtyani said.

For runners who insist on smoking, Ashtyani recommends annual echocardiograms and stress tests.

'Which poison?'

"I would just tell them they need to check their heart and lung function on a yearly basis, because they could have heart and lung disease that's not diagnosed even though they exercise," Ashtyani said. "It could be masked by the fact that they're in good shape."

Smith gets mad when other people make a point to bust on him for smoking. Even more galling is that some of these antagonists are significantly overweight.

"You lay off the Twinkies," Smith said, "I'll lay off the cigarettes."

Smokers are an easier target, Smith believes. Both groups draw doctors' wrath.

"They are equally bad," said Dr. Anees Khan, chief of pulmonary medicine at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson. "Actually, it's like, 'Which poison do you want to choose?' I would think one will do the damage."

Smith will continue along this course — chain-smoking during the day, distance running at night — until his health deteriorates. He doesn't expect it to anytime soon, but that doesn't mean he lives without fear.

"Who wants to drop dead?" Smith asked.

No comments:

Post a Comment