Dr. Harry Prapavessis, Director of Western's new Exercise and Health Psychology Laboratory, and his colleagues have shown that supervised exercise in addition to pharmacological agents like nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) helps smoking cessation, improves physical fitness, and delays weight gain in women smokers.
Past studies show that exercise can cause changes in brain activity that may help reduce cigarette cravings. While researchers do not yet know exactly what causes the difference in brain activity following exercise, they do know that the results are significant. One suggestion is that completing exercise raises mood (possibly through increases in dopamine) which reduces the salience or importance of wanting a cigarette. Another possibility is that exercise causes a shift in blood flow to areas of the brain less involved in anticipation of reward and pleasure generated by smoking images.
In the study, 70% of women had stopped smoking at the end of the 12-week program, but after one year, only 27% remained abstinent. "Our physical fitness and weight data supported the abstinence data," said Prapavessis. "This suggests that exercise needs to be maintained for individuals to continue to kick the smoking habit." Prapavessis goes on to say "it is important to determine whether inexpensive home and community-based lifestyle exercise maintenance programs can maintain exercise, fitness and weight after cessation program termination, and hence prevent (reduce) smoking relapse".