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No.7610925 ViewReplyReportDelete
I've been reading some papers on the effects of smoking on fitness and unsurprisingly, they all show how smokers tend to have lower VO2max and higher resting heart rates.

I was wondering if this means that smokers will also be less efficient at certain tasks compared to non-smokers.

If we were to take two identical people (same gender, BMI etc.), one a smoker and the other not, and made them walk a fixed distance on a treadmill at the same speed, would the smoker require more energy than the non-smoker?

If so, would this mean that if we measured their O2 consumption during the walk, the smoker would take up more O2 than the non-smoker?

The last part is what confuses me. A smoker shouldn't be able to take up as much O2 as a non-smoker (due to damaged lungs and CO competitively binding with hemoglobin), but if he is less efficient, he'll be taking up more O2 than the non-smoker.

I probably sound stupid and I'm sure I'm missing something very simple, but I need to know what it is.