FRIDAY, June 7, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Weight-obsessed young girls are prone to turn into tobacco-obsessed young women.
That's the conclusion of a new study that links body image to cigarette smoking.
White girls who were concerned about their weight as pre-teens were 1.5 times more likely than other girls to smoke by their late teens, researchers found. And in a surprising finding, the rate was even higher -- 2.4 times -- for black girls, who were thought to be less concerned about weight than whites.
It's not clear why girls who worry about their weight turn into smokers. But it may have something to do with a belief that smokers are thinner, says study co-author Dr. Carolyn Voorhees, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
"If they believe this, they might use smoking as a way to control their weight," she says.
The findings appear in the June issue of the journal Preventive Medicine.
Voorhees, who worked on the study while at the National Institutes of Health, analyzed surveys of 2,379 white and black girls from Richmond, Calif. (a city near San Francisco), Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. Researchers interviewed the girls at ages 9 and 10 and then followed them for nine years.
The researchers tried to determine the factors that were most likely to predict which girls would become smokers.
The new study found that pre-teen white girls were more likely to become smokers if they were worried about their weight, had behavioral problems, lived with one parent, or experienced high levels of stress.
"A lot of people do smoke to cope with stress," Voorhees says. "But I'm surprised that girls this young might use it as a coping strategy."
Among black girls, concern about weight was the only factor that seemed to influence whether they would become smokers. That's surprising, Vorhees says, because researchers consider black women to be more accepting of their body weight than other women.
One next step for researchers will be to determine whether girls obsessed with how they look turn to smoking as a weight-loss aid, Voorhees adds.
For now, she says, the study shows the importance of emphasizing physical activity and "other things we know help reduce stress and manage your weight."
It may also be helpful to give girls information about how smoking truly affects their weight, says Lloyd D. Johnston, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan who studies cigarette use by teens.
While it's clear that some people do gain weight when they quit smoking, Johnston says he doesn't know if smokers lose weight when they start.
"If there is no validity to that, the obvious thing would be to make it clear that's the case," he says. "If there is validity, then the argument is a little more complicated. But still, (smoking) is one hell of a price to pay to lose a few pounds."
More than 3,000 young people start smoking each day, according to federal estimates. But higher cigarette prices appear to be sending the rates downward. A survey of 44,000 students last year found that the smoking rate among eighth-graders dropped from a high of 21 percent in 1996 to 12 percent in 2001.
Smoking also fell during those five years from 30 percent to 21 percent among 10th-graders, and from 37 percent to 30 percent among 12th-graders, the federal statistics indicate.
What To Do
Anyone who needs a reminder about the dangers of teen smoking can consult the American Heart Association. Learn more about teen smoking at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
