Smoking - give me the facts!

[peter]

Of course smoking is bad for you. It makes you smell bad, costs you money, screws your health and generally impacts negatively in your life. The trouble is I like it.

Sure I'm probably addicted to it - but I can't even be sure of that because I've never tried to give up. I started smoking 40 years ago aged 14 and have never once tried to quit. I have never been a huge smoker, maybe 7 a day or less at present up to about 20 a day for very short periods while I was revising for my degree's etc. I have never been able to smoke at work which is a major help in keeping it down, but by and large I don't have to fight too hard to keep it at a 'manageable' level.

But this is where the problem kicks in. What is a managable level of smoking. It is notoriously difficult to find any data pertaining to the 'increased risk' posed by different levels of cigarette consumption ( and I do understand that there are so many and varied ways of smoking that this in itself makes the problem much greater) upon which to base any kind of a judgement.

Lets say I smoke a standard 10mg tar, 0.9mg nicotene, 10mg carbon monoxide gigarette. Here are the questions I want answered.

1. Is the increase in risk associated with smoking directly proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked ie ten times that for a one hundred a day smoker than for a ten a day man. Or is it the case that the risk is so weighted towards the small number end that it is the fact that you smoke at all that is the significant risk increasing factor rather than the number you smoke a day (in which case there is little point from a health basis in keeping your intake down as I do).

2. What is the actual increase in risk if the 'base line' is taken into consideration. ie taken in say 'deaths per thousand' of the major smoking related health risks what is the base-line number of a population of non-smokers, and then how does this figure rise with 'number of gigarettes a day smoked'.

3. How do things like whether you live in an urban or rural area affect the situation. ie is city living already significantly increasing your risk in these health areas without the added insult of 20 fags a day being thrown into the mix.

4. Are there any measureable bennefits to smoking at all. I suffer big time from stress (who doesn't) and smoking 'seems' to help with this. Is this a measurable help to the point where it mitigates at all the deleterious effects of my smoking. Could the effects on my stress be just as deleterious if I gave up my 6 a day habbit as if I keep on with it.


Let me stress Guys - this is not a post in favor of smoking against not smoking, just an appeal to know the 'whole' of the facts so I can make a valued judgement. After all, as I said at the start of this - I like smoking.

(Quick anacdote:- I went to a cardiac specialist on one occasion to get clearance to travel to a high altitude country for my insurance and the man asked if I was a smoker. "About 5 a day" I replied, and he snorted. "Forget it", he said. "I get people on 80 a day in here. 5's never going to do you any harm." I was supprised by this until I spotted him him out walking his dog a few weeks later happily puffing away on a choice looking cigar!)

[Iolanthe]

I too will be interested in a reply to this.

Ditto to most of what Peter said: smoked since I was 14 (now 45 years), enjoy it. Now roll my own, smaller fags, use filters, don't smoke so much as I used to.

Tried to give up many times without success, probably because I feel I ought to stop, but don't really want to.

Was in hospital for a week 15 years ago, could have gone down to the basement to smoke but didn't. However, on the way home I begged hubby to stop the car for ciggies. So wish I hadn't now.

On the medical issue; Dad smoked from 14 as well, died of a stroke at 84. Mum never smoked, but died of cancer at 63. I take after my Dad in most things.

[deer of the dawn]

Cigarettes are bad for you. How bad are you willing to live with? I guess the choice is yours.

[MsMary]

Here's a lot of info from the CDC in the US:

www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/index.htm

More from the USFDA:

www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/Ci ... 259214.htm

[peter]

Cigarettes are bad for you. How bad are you willing to live with? I guess the choice is yours.

Thats just the point DOTD - until I can answer the questions above I can't really make that decision.

Similar problem MsMary - thanks for the link, but all I could find were the basic facts of smokers being give or take 3 times more likely to die prematurely as a result of their habit - but 3 times more likely than what? One in a hundred, one in a thousand, one in ten? It makes a difference.

[MsMary]

It doesn't make a difference. Every time you smoke, you are pulling carcinogenic tar and nicotine into your lungs, increasing your risk of lung cancer and emphysema.

The doctor who said five cigarettes a day won't hurt you is full of it.

Studies have shown that smokers increase how much they inhale with so-called low nicotine cigarettes, to increase their nicotine dose. I suspect the same is true for people who smoke fewer cigarettes a day.

Smoking is an addiction, and one that can kill you.

But ultimately, the choice is yours. You can rationalize yourself into thinking that "only" five cigarettes a day won't hurt you.

BTW, when I was in England, I notice they have much more strongly worded health warnings on smoking materials than in the US. Have you tried checking out some British websites?

[Iolanthe]

BTW, when I was in England, I notice they have much more strongly worded health warnings on smoking materials than in the US. Have you tried checking out some British websites?

There are some horrible pictures with the warnings on tobacco products over here.

I know why I should give up, but I need to find a way to want to give up.

Sorry for the hijack, Peter

[MsMary]

I hear you, Iolanthe.

Quitting is hard, no two ways about it.

[Vraith]

Well here's some numbers on lung cancer risk:
never smoked: men .2%/women .4%
quite smoking 5% / 2.5%
light smoker
[less than 5/day 7% /6.4%
heavy [5 or more] 24% /18.5%
[note the answer to your "is it weighted towards any smoking" question is in there...a heavy smoker is just barely 3x more likely than you, you are @40 times higher than a non-smoker. Part of the reason for that is that how many years you smoke matters quite a bit, not just how many a day....they actually use a term "pack-years."]

and that's only lung cancer, there are similar stats for a number of other diseases.
a "light smoker" loses about 6% of life expectancy, and increases health spending by 30%
a "heavy" one loses just over 10%, and health spending is more than double.

and another tidbit: one "feels" like they relax when getting that smoke...[being a long-term, but now 1 year free, I know this well] but it's not so, your body actually does the opposite, heightened stress on all your systems...the feeling of relaxation is mostly due to the fact that you physically breath in a relaxation-enhancing way while inhaling/exhaling during smoking.
Do you by chance recall your first smoke of your life, or are you, like I was, extra sensitive to that first smoke of the day? You know that buzzy feeling? That's not "soothing," "easing"...it's the nervous system ramping up.

As for benefits: there is some [a tiny some] evidence that it can may help prevent or alleviate a small percentage for Parkinson's and Alzheimers...however it is far more likely to kill you off before you've lived long enough for symptoms to develop.

[lorin]

Smoking doubles your overall stroke risk compared with nonsmokers,
1 an increase in risk similar to that caused by the strongest stroke risk factors such as high cholesterol. In women younger than 65, smoking is estimated to be responsible for 55% of deaths due to stroke (51% in men).
2 Overall, smoking contributes to 12% to 14% of all stroke deaths.
3 Smoking has varying effects on your risk of suffering different kinds of stroke: it approximately doubles a woman's risk of blocked-vessel (ischemic) stroke, the most common kind of stroke.
4 Smoking has an even larger effect on the risk of bleeding (hemorrhagic) stroke, raising risk to 2 to 4 times that of nonsmokers. Among nearly 40,000 US women in the Women's Health Study, those who smoked more than 15 cigarettes a day had a 4-fold increased risk of bleeding stroke caused by subarachnoid hemorrhage, or bleeding into the space surrounding the brain, compared with never smokers.

[Avatar]

And yet there are people who smoke their entire lives, and never get cancer, and those who get cancer or die of lung disease who have never smoked.

My cousin is a professor of cellular and molecular biology (specialising in lung stuff), at the University of Giessen's Lung Centre. He hates smoking. He doesn't much care for smokers. But he's said that he can't claim that there is a definitive link, much as he would like to...

*shrug* Maybe you'll be lucky, maybe you won't. Personally, I'm trying like hell to cut down. (20 a day for about 20 years...down to about 15 now.)

Apparently though, only something like 5% manage to quit cold, without nicotine replacement therapy and the like.

All else aside, it's an addiction. And despite what I said above, that still doesn't mean it's not bad for you. It is bad. It exacerbates all sorts of things, and has other effects. All it means is that they can't say that if you smoke, it will definitely cause you to die.

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

In two days, I will have quit 9 years. Quitting smoking was the hardest thing I've ever done. I was 30 when I quit. I started at 12 and smoked intermittently to 17, and with only minor 'pauses' from 17 to 30. I smoked Marlboro Reds, took heavy drags, and smoked about 15 cigarettes a day on average. There were times when I smoked two packs or more per day.

Smoking is something that catches up with you eventually. When I was 30 I started having shortness of breath and heart palpitations. That is what it took to convince me to quit. I was so addicted I would tell myself any lie to be able to smoke. Quit smoking for a month? I've got it licked, hand me a smoke. Smoked that first cigarette? Might as well buy a carton. And so on and so on.

If I could change one thing about my life, I never would have taken that first drag. Your body is a finely tuned machine. Cigarette smoke gums up the works and makes every system work harder. We only have so much life in us. When we are young we throw it away like it means nothing. It is only when you're older that you come to understand there are limits to what your body can take. Your heart has only so many beats in it before it gives. Cigarettes waste heartbeats that cannot be replaced. Your lungs can only be so damaged until they cannot repair themselves; when they cannot repair themselves, the heart has to work even harder. Then the kidneys have to work overtime. It's all so finely balanced; in the end it always teeters over into a downward spiral. Cigarettes bring that to fruition all the sooner, well before the time when it should happen.

You might get lucky. But odds are, one day it catches up with you. If it does, that feeling of regret for permanently damaging your quality of life over something as silly as smoking a cigarette will be hard to live with. But, maybe you won't have to live with the regret for very long.

[I'm Murrin]

And yet there are people who smoke their entire lives, and never get cancer, and those who get cancer or die of lung disease who have never smoked.

My cousin is a professor of cellular and molecular biology (specialising in lung stuff), at the University of Giessen's Lung Centre. He hates smoking. He doesn't much care for smokers. But he's said that he can't claim that there is a definitive link, much as he would like to...

Maybe for cancer (heck, unless you know you've gotten a hefty dose of radiation there's not really any way to definitively cite a cause for cancer), but things like heart disease, emphysema, and all that are definitively linked (it's the massive black tar deposits in your lungs that give it away!).

I've never understood how people start in the first place, unless they've been exposed a lot to cigarette smoke before starting and so already have a bit of the nicotine response in their system. One taste should be enough to put people off the stuff, surely?

[Iolanthe]

I've never understood how people start in the first place, unless they've been exposed a lot to cigarette smoke before starting and so already have a bit of the nicotine response in their system. One taste should be enough to put people off the stuff, surely?

Because everyone else did, in the 60s and 70s it was the thing to do. Nearly all the extended family did, it was "grown up" and at that age you want to be like everyone else.

I know a lot of people my age who used to smoke.

But, I want to see my grandchildren grow up (my granddaughter is only 6 months); I want to get rid of this awful cough I've had since Christmas; I want to be able to run for the bus.

I'm away for a few days later this week and will have little opportunity to smoke. Perhaps.........we'll see.

[Vraith]

I've never understood how people start in the first place, unless they've been exposed a lot to cigarette smoke before starting and so already have a bit of the nicotine response in their system. One taste should be enough to put people off the stuff, surely?

Heh...I was very anti-smoking [or at least thought I was, I guess]...I even got punished for crushing a pack of my grandmother's smokes once.
The army made me start. I hear they're pretty anti-smoking, especially at basic training, nowadays...but they didn't used to be.
So this is how it went: about 2 weeks into basic, I noticed that whenever we had a short break [smoke 'em if you got 'em, literally]...if you were smoking and something had to be done, you wouldn't get picked to do it. I figured since I really really disapproved of smoking I couldn't get hooked. So on a stop on a march, I bummed a smoke, and pretty much instantly purely loved it.

[Avatar]

... but things like heart disease, emphysema, and all that are definitively linked (it's the massive black tar deposits in your lungs that give it away!)

Linked, contributory, but not definitively causative. Otherwise everybody who ever smoked would have heart disease and emphysema, but for some reason, not everybody who smokes does. And of course people suffer from those things that have never smoked.

(Don't get me wrong...I know it's bad for you. )

And pretty much instantly purely loved it.

--A

[peter]

I'm with Iolanthe on this. We picked up a habit in times when it's badness was not emphasised greatly and their was great 'peer pressure' to look older when you were still really a kid.

Now we have to feel ashamed for it and every time we make an admission that we smoke or ask for a little ray of hope that just maybe we're not *all* doomed to die in agony we have to acompany it with a bit of hand wringing apology. Well thats not the point. I don't much care for that *shrug* "Oh well - it's your life to chuck away as you please* attitude. Thats not what I'm after here. If I'm going to try give up smoking - and for the first time ever it is on the cards - thats not what I want. If It's going to pull my life to peices, or make me an impossible bastard to live with, or reduce me to a nervous wreck - all things of which knowing me are highly likely - I want to know I am doing it for tangible bennefit. ie I want facts, and facts is what I seem to be having real trouble finding (hell - I even asked the cigarette reps at work and even they didn't seem to have much idea where to find a synopsis of the data).

Sorry guys - can't blame this on you at all. I just always come to this place wenever I've got questions to answer.

I'm not ready today to tear up my cigs but I'm thinking it won't be long. Anybody else want to come along for the ride?

[Iolanthe]

I'm going to give it a go, Peter. Tobacco almost run out - down to the dust now. It should be quite easy for the next few days, away from home, indoors and busy all day, travelodge in the evenings. When I get back home it will be more difficult - I only smoke in one room - the extension at the end of the kitchen. I shall miss my hourly trips downstairs to have a fag Hopefully

[Shaun das Schaf]

I'm not a ciggie smoker, but I have experience overcoming an addiction, so I wish you both the VERY, VERY BEST OF LUCK!

I'm still struggling with sugar abuse. (All those Shaun cakes Iolanthe ) I know it sounds like nothing, but when it's outta control, it ain't good for my spleen or my moods, and I've previously managed about 6-8months without it and felt much better. I'm thinking about trying to join you, just with a different vice.

[peter]

This is what frightens the crap out of me. All of my 'vices' are so interlinked that I can see myself just transfering from one to another - and at 240+ lbs weight That I Don't Need!