Smoking attenuates regular aerobic exercise benefits to episodic free recall immediately following strenuous physical activity

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate the extent to which free recall performance is influenced by competing demands on physiological resources dependent on blood-oxygen levels. Fifty-six healthy young adults (mean age ¼ 20 years) were allocated to groups (n 1-4 ¼ 14) according to their level of exercise (more than 6 h aerobic exercise per wk, or sedentary 1 ) and smoking (more than 10 cigarettes per day, or none) behaviour. Participants performed two free recall tasks, one under normal physically inactive conditions and the other immediately following strenuous physical exertion (a step-up test for 2 min). We predicted that recall would suffer following strenuous physical activity among smoking aerobic exercisers. We reasoned this would be due to the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood being compromised in this group by higher levels of smoking-related carbon monoxide in the blood stream. The results supported this prediction. We interpret our findings according to a resource model of cognitive function, mediated by physiological mechanisms.

The effects of acute exercise on cognitive functioning and cigarette cravings during temporary abstinence from smoking

“…Although performance on the Stroop task has been shown to be reduced during nicotine abstinence (Gross et al, 1993), it may be that other aspects of information processing are more sensitive to influence during and following exercise. For example, other studies have found positive effects of a single session of exercise on working memory (Bunce et al, 2004;Churchill et al, 2002;Williams and Lord, 1997), and simple reaction time (Hogervorst et al, 1996). Also, Hall et al (2001) concluded that not all forms of executive control will respond in the same fashion to exercise.…”

The acute effects of exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms, affect and smoking behaviour: a systematic review

“…Also, two studies were not published [7,8] and two were published abstracts [9,10], but are considered in the review due to their unique methodology. Three additional studies were excluded from this review, as the focus was not on smoking‐related withdrawal symptoms or cravings [11] or did not examine the effect of single bouts of exercise [12,13].…”