Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
You’re a cigarette smoker and have been for many years. You’ve since decided to try making healthier choices in your life, which is why you decided to start intermittent fasting. What do you do if a craving for a cigarette strikes in the middle of your fast? Are you allowed to smoke on a fast or does that break it?
Smoking shouldn’t break an intermittent fast, although those who observe Ramadan disagree. Cigarettes contain no calories, nor do they have a lot of sugar that can affect your insulin levels. Still, smoking and fasting is not the smartest thing for your health. On longer fasts especially, you’re at risk of arterial blood pressure decreases and a deadly condition called cerebral hypoxia.
Keep reading to learn more about why nicotine and fasts don’t mix and whether you might want to consider quitting smoking before you commit to intermittent fasting. You’re not going to want to miss it.
The Basics of Nicotine
Each time you light up a cigarette, you’re ingesting nicotine. This nitrogen-containing chemical comes from the tobacco plant as well as other plants. Nicotine isn’t actually what causes cancer in smokers, but it is what gets you addicted to tobacco. Some medical experts believe that nicotine is almost as addictive as cocaine and equally as hard to quit.
Nicotine isn’t 100 percent bad, as data has proven it can help your concentration and memory while lessening anxiety. However, it hurts you a whole lot more than it helps. You may experience a slew of nasty side effects when ingesting nicotine through cigarettes or other tobacco sources.
These include constipation, headaches, dry mouth, watery eyes, sore throat, nausea, dizziness, belching, and hiccups. Some regular nicotine users even report a runny nose that’s not from allergies.
If you try to quit nicotine cold turkey, its addictive qualities really kick in. You may find your concentration plummets, as does your focus. You could become more irritable and moodier, experience depression and anxiety, and feel empty. The cravings also become intense to the point where you feel like you have to smoke again.
Cigarettes that contain less nicotine tend to cause a reduced addictive effect in users, says a 2013 report from Tobacco Control.
Can You Smoke Cigarettes on an Intermittent Fast?
Now that you understand a bit more about what’s in your cigarettes, let’s circle back around to your main question. Can you smoke cigarettes when intermittent fasting or will you break the fast?
You can break a fast by consuming calories. This creates an insulin response due to the sugar content of the food or beverage you ingest. Cigarettes have no calories, so you don’t have to worry about breaking your fast that way. Most brands of cigarettes don’t have a lot of sugar, so you’re in the clear there too.
Those who observe Ramadan believe that if any particles can get to the stomach, including cigarette particles, that it counts as breaking the fast. Outside of that religious observance, most say that no, smoking does not break a fast.
Still, if you think going days at a time subsisting on nothing but cigarettes and water (or maybe tea or black coffee) is good for your health, you’re fooling yourself.
A study called Effect of Smoking on the Fasting Blood Sugar and Pressor Amines published by Grace M. Roth, Ph.D., and Kai Rehder, M.D, explored the very effects of smoking in a fasted state.
The researchers had 24 participants in all. The group smoked two cigarettes, but only two-thirds of each. Even that small amount was enough to increase their pulse rate and blood pressure. The participants also had lower toe and finger skin temperature.
The study also notes that by smoking those two-thirds of two cigarettes, the participants’ fasting blood sugar did not increase nor decrease. That sounds good for you, right? It means fasting processes like fat burning and ketosis won’t be interrupted.
Unfortunately, a study from the American Diabetes Association and a variety of other sources have all come to another conclusion: smoking can increase your insulin resistance. When you have insulin resistance, your body’s cells struggle to use insulin. This results in more leftover glucose due to a lack of cell absorption.
Your blood sugar increases, which could cause prediabetes. As you may be familiar if you’re a regular blog reader here, prediabetes could potentially become type 2 diabetes, although it may take years for this to happen. High blood sugar is also associated with eye and kidney damage and heart disease.
Besides insulin resistance, you’re at risk in a different way when smoking on a long intermittent fast. Since you’re consuming no nutrients, your body transitions to accepting the cigarette chemicals as a form of nutrition instead.
As you can imagine, this isn’t good. This so-called internal nutrition can cause your arterial blood pressure to plummet and even lead to heart failure. Other risks include convulsions, fainting, and cerebral hypoxia. This condition occurs when your brain fails to get adequate oxygen. Without immediate medical intervention, cerebral hypoxia can be fatal.
Is It Worth Quitting Cigarettes?
Okay, so everything in that last section is quite discouraging, but you’ve always heard that smoking can make you less hungry. Indeed, the bad habit ramps up your metabolism, which can keep you slimmer. Your heart rate also increases, upping your rate of developing heart disease.
Every last benefit related to cigarettes is a double-edged sword.
The CDC reported in late 2018 that 480,000 people in the United States alone die from cigarettes annually. You don’t want to be another statistic. Although it’s not easy, it’s better for your short-term and long-term health if you can quit smoking. Then you can focus on intermittent fasting safely.
Conclusion
Smoking should not break an intermittent fast since it’s a calorie-free activity. Most cigarettes don’t have enough sugar to affect ketosis and fat burning, either. However, smoking has been associated with insulin resistance, which causes blood sugar to spike.
Much worse is how your body can use the nicotine and other chemicals as a type of temporary nutrition when intermittent fasting. This can prove deadly. Quitting cigarettes is certainly within your best interest, then.