Young UH smokers
targeted for study
on use of exercise

Researchers believe fitness
counseling may encourage
quitting

Sixty University of Hawaii-Manoa students have an opportunity to exercise free with a personal trainer.

There's only one catch: They must be smokers.

The hope is that, after seven weeks of working out, they won't be smoking.

"We want college students to stop smoking, but based on our preliminary research we found most young people are really not interested in cessation," said Dr. Hye-ryeon Lee of the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.

"They all think they're pretty healthy and invincible. It's hard to think 40 years down the road."

Since regular smoking cessation messages don't work on that population, she said they tried to figure out what would work.

One area young adults are interested in is physical appearance, she said. "They all want to look beautiful and handsome and what-not. They have a lot of interest in fitness and physical activity. We decided to use that as a carrot for smoking cessation."

Manoa students who volunteer for the "Start to Stop" program will go through seven weeks of free fitness training with a qualified trainer at the UH Stan Sheriff Fitness Center, along with counseling to quit smoking.

One of the biggest reasons college students smoke is to deal with stress, but "smoking actually causes more stress," Lee said.

"We have to give them something else to help deal with the stress of being a student, working and struggling over different things."

Exercise is a good solution, she said, particularly for young women. "Sometimes when they stop smoking, their appetite will increase because they start tasting food.

"Temporarily they might gain some weight, and of course that freaks them out. Working out and exercising helps with that and helps with craving. Exercise and smoking cessation are very complimentary."

Another unique feature of the program is that volunteers' partners of three months or longer also may go through the fitness training.

It's believed lifestyle changes like physical activity or smoking cessation work better with a supportive partner, Lee said.

They can be smokers or nonsmokers, and it's up to them if they want to go through the counseling program, she said.

The volunteers must be UH students 18 through 25 years old. Partners don't have to be students.

Individualized counseling will be provided through the UH-Manoa Student Health Services Center. Students can arrange it around their schedules, Lee said.

Counseling will continue "until they quit smoking," she said. "If they quit smoking after two weeks, that's fine. We'll continue the exercise intervention.'

As another incentive, she said, a nicotine patch will be provided to students who qualify. They will be assessed to determine how much they smoke, whether they're taking any medications, if they're pregnant, have skin sensitivity or any other problems that would exclude the patch, she said.

They will be screened before starting the program to make sure they have no health problems.

If just 20 percent of the participants quit smoking, "that would be fabulous," Lee said. "Most are not really interested in quitting.

"What they say is, 'If you can show how my lung is right now and it looks dark, maybe I'll think about it.' The impact of smoking is not going to show up that soon, unfortunately."

But the exercise will reinforce how important it is to be in good shape, she said. "They may feel the impact of that when they're short of breath."

Interested volunteers should call Regina Suyderhoud, project coordinator, at 441-8185, or e-mail: start-to-stop @crch.hawii.edu.