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Girls
Who Diet Often May
Be More Likely to Smoke
NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - Frequent dieting during the teen years
may be indicative of more serious eating disorders. Now, two Massachusetts
researchers suggest that such dieting may also be linked to smoking
initiation among girls.
``Among adolescent
girls, dieting, which is extremely common, may be contributing
to the serious problem our nation has with teenage tobacco use,''
according to study author Dr. S. Bryn Austin, of the Children's
Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
``Dieting
by teenage girls may increase their risk of starting to smoke
cigarettes, and the more frequently they diet, the more likely
they are to start smoking,'' she said in an interview with Reuters
Health
In an investigation
of the relationship between dieting and smoking, Austin and co-author
Dr. Steven L. Gortmaker, of the Harvard School of Public Health
in Boston, conducted a study that involved 932 students in 6th
and 7th grade.
At the start
of the study, 3% of the girls and 3% of the boys reported smoking,
and of these smokers about 4% of girls and 5% of boys reported
dieting at least once a week.
Roughly 2
years later, however, 16% of girls and 12% of boys reported smoking
initiation, the authors write in the March issue of the American
Journal of Public Health, journal of the American Public Health
Association. The number of dieters also increased at follow-up,
with 21% of girls and 18% of boys reporting dieting at least once
a week.
Girls who
reported dieting more than once a week in the previous month were
nearly four times more likely to become smokers than their peers
who said they had not dieted. Those girls who initially said they
had dieted once a week or less in the past month ``had almost
two times the odds of becoming smokers at follow-up compared with
girls who at (the start of the study) had not dieted in the past
month,'' Austin and Gortmaker explain. Such an association was
not found among the boys, the authors note.
``In our study,
over a third of the smoking initiation by girls was attributable
to dieting,'' Austin said.
One reason
for the association among girls, the researchers hypothesize,
may be that ``weight concerns underlie both behaviors--that is,
young persons with heightened weight concerns will be at increased
risk for both dieting and smoking as strategies to cope with their
weight concerns,'' Austin and Gortmaker write.
However, findings
indicate that obese girls were less likely than non-obese girls
to report smoking at the start of the study or during the follow-up
period, the authors note.
``Our results
indicate that to prevent smoking among adolescent girls in this
country, attention needs to be given to the widespread problems
of dieting and unhealthful weight concerns,'' Austin said.
SOURCE:
American Journal of Public Health 2001;91:446-450.
Reference
Source 89
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