The Human Body Maintenance Guide:

What pushes people to keep smoking? Addiction? Maybe.
On the other hand, most smokers would answer that question with,
“It gives me time to go relax outside; to have a social life.” Or, “It calms me down, chasing away my stress."
It’s also known that the greater majority of ex-smokers gain weight after they stopped smoking.
This tells us that smoking could also have an impact on weight management. But wait a minute!
How could inhaling poison many times a day make people feelbetter or bring any health benefits?
"What is it with smoking? Isn't it just some cool thing to do leading to addiction!"
These two questions get to my mind when I hear the above.
1) "Is it only in peoples' minds, or is there subsequent real physiological benefits to smoking?"
2) "Is the secret in what they do, or in the smoke itself?"

Let's try to answer it by asking this simple question first:
“What do all smokers do that most people don’t everyday, that makes them feel better?”

Answer:
They deep breathe many times a day.Again, I thought of the poison and wondered: 
- "What if the benefits they get had nothing to fo with the cigarettes?
- "What if the benefits had more to do with the mechanics of smoking than with what is inhaled and exhaled?Of course, good oxygenation helps. After all, can two to three hundreds deep breaths be worth nothing?
That's how many breaths smokers take in and out in average.
More than anyone who doesn’t smoke or train.

Hum, that kept me thinking...!!!"
Considering the smoke they inhale, can we really talk about oxygenation?

"Addiction to nicotine exists, there is no doubt about that. But what is unknown is this:
- Not only do smokers get addicted to the chemicals contained in the smoke.
But, coud they also get addicted to the benefits of the power of deep breathng?

After meditating on that for a while, I had this hypothesis:
Smoking is party an unconscious excuse to get other benefits: relaxation and social life.
If there were no benefit whatsoever to smoking, nobody would inhale that smoke, right?
Which means that the benefits of smoking are bigger than its downsides, at least in short term.
The concept goes as follows: Whatever the behaviour, in the moment, the outcome is positive:
This means that for the moment, it is always the less worse of two things/choices,
whether it suits one's beliefs or not! I'm sure some psychologist freak explained that already
(or some NLP dude somewhere sure did)! I’ll let you ponder that for a while…

SO MANY BREATHING TECHNIQUES ...
Many Western individuals try eating better, take supplements, or follow specific diet
to make their immune system better. More and more people train on a regular basis,
pay attention to their posture, do periodic or intermittent fasting to boost their health.
Each approach claiming to bring benefits to its disciples. Don’t worry, I am not here to refute their claims. Nevertheless, when comes time to determine what's the quickest way to boost the human body’s immune system and fight stress at the same time, I do not hesitate to give my vote to breathing.

THE SUPER POWER YOU DON'T USE...
Lots of breathing techniques exist. Somehow, you try one of them, and it will make you feel better
no matter which one you use. What do they all have in common? What's the common thread?
Since they all make us breathe more than what we normally do, they all lead to better oxygenation.

Could better oxygenation alone be the magical ingredient?
Science and common-sense both confirms it: "Yes, it does!"
For most of people, putting into practice any technique is like breathing for the first time in years.
It could even make you feel dizzy or euphoric because the body is not used to such a surge of oxygen.
Every cell of the body discovers new capacities because of the catalystic power of oxygen.
New metabolic reactions take place. The new practitioners will soon feel great changes; new energy.

Ultimately, each technic has proven to be creating positive changes; to each, their own.
But, what differentiates them from one another? One word: Mechanics.
All techniques are different in their mechanical aspects: the nose, not the nose, holding, not holding,
fast, slow, sequenced or not, one nostril, both nostrils, one in, one out, etc.

Breathing consciously gets us out of our comfort zone of breathing.
Not doing so keeps us like being under a spell.
Normally an autonomous process, breathing consciously suddenly puts the user back to a position of command. When using a breathing technique, we choose to be in charge.
Consequently, we become more conscious of your physical self, like driving a car versus being the passenger.

All meditative and restorative approaches use breathing to reconnect the user
with its own physical machine: Yoga, Tai-CHi, Qi Gong, etc.
To all of these, breathing is the main ingredient of their secret sauce.
Breathing consciously gets us out of our shallow comfort zone.
To the opposite, not doing so makes us behave like we are under a spell,
like driven by a hypnotic unconscious mind. We are like then in an "automatic mode".
And then, abandoned to the crazy pace of modern days,
we wonder why we have no control upon what's going on...

So, where do smokers get their unfair advantage?
What they inhale is poisonous. What else is left that could bring them the benefits they get?
The two aspects of the mechanics of smoking:
A) Smoking is probably the only moment of the day they are in control of their breath.
B) The mode of breath: pace and the depth of their breathing. Hold it for long, or not holding it.

What kind of power can Mechanics over the body?
The power of Biomechanics. that's mainly what I discuss in my book (link at bottom).
 50 more golden nuggets like that in "PAIN IS A LANGUAGE".:

An essay on: How BIOMECHANICS can empower us to act on our health.

Thanks for reading me! - Jean-Pierre

PS: Come and get your "Day-to-day Biomechanics" free course you should have got a long time ago.
2 other interesting facts:
From webmd.com  Relation Covid / Smokers.- Data in U.S.A. :
A) According to the CDC. During 1st phase of covid in 2020, among 7,000 hospitalized patients,
about 1.3% were current smokers and 2.3% were former smokers,
although about 14% of the country smokes.
B) Breathing to lose calories. No kidding. GO see the Ted-X entitled:
“How breathing and metabolism are interconnected”by Ruben Merman.
Worth to check it out !