What do you really know about smoking cigarettes?

Athletes know that smoking tobacco interferes with athletic performance, but here are some interesting facts relating to tobacco and exercise that you may not be aware of:

When you light up that cigarette, you are inhaling carbon monoxide. It is then absorbed into your bloodstream and binds with your red blood cells. This bonding is so tight that the red blood cells cannot carry oxygen.

How's that for a sobering thought? Want percentages? The blood of a smoker will have 7 percent less ability to transport oxygen through the body. That's why smokers tire more easily than nonsmokers during aerobic exercise.

The other problem with smoking is the addictive factor. Smoking leads to chemical addiction with withdrawal symptoms when you quit such as anxiety, depression, and lack of concentration, overeating, irritability, insomnia and even sweating. It sounds awful doesn't it? Anyone who has quit will tell you it is.

The nicotine that you inhale into your lungs goes right to the brain undiluted. Almost 100 percent of the nicotine in that puff hits the brain within eight seconds after you inhale. If you puff too fast, your brain can't handle it and you become dizzy or nauseated.

If you chew tobacco, the nicotine is absorbed more slowly and in a continuous fashion, through your cheeks and gums. A small amount of dilution occurs because the blood from this area goes back to the heart and mixes with other blood before it hits the brain. Don't take this as a reason to trade smoking for chewing tobacco. The results are the same.

Regular exercise helps to break the smoking habit, and it helps relieve the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Exercise also gives you the need to quit. If you smoke, especially right before a fitness workout, you are cutting your ability 7 percent and you stress the most important parts of you: Your heart, your lungs and your brain.

Being with a group of people who do not smoke, who have the added stamina to beat you at every turn, will give you the push you need to put out that cigarette. Change your whole circle of friends, change your health and you just might win that next race.

You've heard it from your coach, from your doctor, from your spouse and now from me. If you plan on exercising, don't smoke.

• Jerry Vance is the owner of Sweat Shop/Wet Sweat. She offers classes through the Carson City Recreation and Aquatics Center and is a fitness instructor for the Carson City Senior Citizens Center.