Elijah Ngule

 Annotated Bibliography: Research about how smoking can affect bodybuilders and athletes Student’s Name: Prof’s Name: University Affiliation: Course Title: Date of Submission: Annotated Bibliography Smoking is one of the main causes of failure in performance in many athletic and body building activities as well as a significant cause of mortality. Professional athletes are the face of a country and studies have shown that they have high tendency of involving themselves in habits of smoking. Generally smoking deteriorates the health of a smoker and reduces his/ her ability to deliver effectively. Smoking affects many parts of the body which include but not limited to lungs, blood, muscles and energy production. The first source is giving account of the effects of smoking on performance of the athlete and body builder as well as some damages that occur in athlete’s body as a result of the same. (Hessami et. al, 2012). The second source is illustrating the effects of smoking on skeletal muscles of an athlete or a body builder (Degens et. al, 2015).The third source is almost similar to the second one but it associates smoking with weight loss as well as muscle mass reduction. (Douglas et. al, 2008). The fourth source is explaining effect of smoking on oxidative stress which affects body metabolism on a smoker which in turn affects the muscle functions. (Barreiro et. al, 2010). As a consequence, these four sources are valuable for this study because they all basically address how smoking affects the performance of athletes and body builders. Hessami, Z., Aryanpur, M., Emami, H., & Masjedi, M. (2012). Behavior and knowledge of Iranian professional athletes towards smoking. Asian journal of sports medicine, 3(4), 297. In this article, the writer carried out a research on the effects of smoking on athletes. This article is valid because practical experiments were carried out whereby anonymous questionnaires were administered to the athletes. The variables assessed were age, initiation age into the sport, type of sport and education as well as tobacco related variables which included smoking history, daily cigarette use and the awareness of the smoking effects by the population. After data analysis, the results showed that tobacco smoking lowers sport performance and damages the health of the athlete by reducing the capacity of the lungs. The article goes on explaining how smoking increases the level of carbon monoxide in the blood of the athlete which reduces the carrying capacity of oxygen to muscles which eventually lowers the respiration rate. This has resulted to a great failure in international sport tournaments and since these athletes are role models to the society, public health has deteriorated. Exercise and physical activities engage the athlete’s mind from wrong mentality which leads to smoking habits, this explains why higher number of smokers are older athletes because they often stop exercising. This article is important in my study since it is in line with my opinion that smoking is one of the major causes of failure in sport performance. The writer concludes by advising athletic and body building smokers to seek professional advice on how to quit smoking. However this article does not carry out experiments on all available sports since only ten sports were involved. Degens, H., Gayan-Ramirez, G., & van Hees, H. W. (2015). Smoking-induced skeletal muscle dysfunction. From evidence to mechanisms. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 191(6), 620-625. In this article, the writer explains how smoking results to dysfunction of skeletal muscles. He starts by illustrating that smoking is an important cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and patients of COPD have complications in skeletal muscles. This reduction in skeletal muscle activities lowers the oxygen delivery to the mitochondria and this means that the energy (ATP) generated will not be enough to carry out athletic or body building activities. The writer also mentions the hindrance of haemoglobin to carry oxygen due to interference of carbon monoxide. The writer proves this by giving an example of how smokers are weaker in resisting fatigue compared to non-smokers. Smoking is proven to inhibit protein synthesis and muscle cells renewal which leads to reduction of muscle mass. The article explains that the changes undergone by muscles as a result of smoking can be rectified by smoking cessation. This article is crucial in my study since it explains the underlying biological processes that are undergone by the body of a smoker which eventually affects the muscles which are very crucial in athletics and body building activities. However there is no physical experiment carried out to justify the truthfulness of the thesis. Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou, A., Metsios, G. S., Panoulas, V. F., Douglas, K. M., Nevill, A. M., Jamurtas, A. Z. & Kitas, G. D. (2008). Cigarette smoking associates with body weight and muscle mass of patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a cross-sectional, observational study. Arthritis research & therapy, 10(3), R59. In this article, the writer associates Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), body weight loss and muscle wasting with smoking. Its general knowledge that smoking is known to inhibit muscle synthesis and the writer carried out an experiment to prove the thesis. A total of 392 people with RA were tested on body mass index (BMI), fat-free mass (FFM), body fat (BF) and waist circumference. The results were that BMI and BF were lowering current an athletic and body building smokers compared to ex-smokers and the never-smoker. However free-fat mass didn’t differ among the groups. The writer concluded that smoking is associated with reduction in BMI, BF and waist circumference which is associated with reduction in muscle mass. This journal is important in my research since it’s in line with my opinion that the muscles of athletes and body builders are adversely affected by smoking. The writer advices the athlete and body building smokers to take smoking cessation program to quit smoking and control weight loss and muscle mass reduction. However the limitations of this article are that it was based on physical variables and the biological processes connecting smoking and muscle mass reduction are not covered. Barreiro, E., Peinado, V. I., Galdiz, J. B., Ferrer, E., Marin-Corral, J., Sánchez, F. & Barberà, J. A. (2010). Cigarette smoke–induced oxidative stress: a role in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease skeletal muscle dysfunction. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 182(4), 477-488. In this article, the writer explains the effects of smoking on inflammation and oxidative stress which in return causes muscle dysfunction. The writer’s objectives were to explore inflammation and oxidative stress of smokers. The methods used to explore tested oxidized protein, protein oxidation and nitration, inflammation and muscle structures of an athletic and body builder smoker. The result of the study showed that the muscle force were reduced in smokers and their protein oxidation level was higher compared to athletic and body building non-smokers. The writer concludes that cigarette smokers exert oxidative modification to their muscles without inducing inflammation which causes muscle loss of an athlete or a body builder. This article is important in my research since it gives valid proofs that were carried out. However the research was carried with a relatively small number of smokers and this may give biased results due to generalization.