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"Who still smokes?" as Denise Grady reports at the NYT that however bad you thought smoking was, it’s even worse. A new study has found that in addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco. “The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” says Brian D. Carter, an author of the study. “It’s not a done story.” Carter says he was inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health surveys being conducted by other researchers. As expected, death rates were higher among the smokers but diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only 83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really low,’ ” Mr. Carter said. “We have this huge cohort. Let’s get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing smokers that we don’t already know.” The researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. "The Surgeon General's report claims 480,000 deaths directly caused by smoking, but we think that is really quite a bit off," concludes Carter adding that the figure may be closer to 540,000.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday February 14 2015, @04:45AM
And having a diet of "fat free, heaps of carbon-hydrates" should be called how?
(if it's not evident, I'm taking a stab at the "today's day and age" level of knowledge; I'm certainly not saying "smoking is good for you and you are a living proof of a genius for taking up smoking", I know it's not so from my personal experience) .
There is a huge difference between the two things. Eating calories, of any form, is important if you want to continue living. But smoking, that's the complete opposite. There is no positives. You are bombarded everywhere that smoking kills, yet, people continue to start smoking.
You can't compare smoking to other risky activities either, like skydiving, or motorcycle racing. Even the guy on youtube that will eat anything, including things like light bulbs, gets more out of that activity than smoking for smokers. Smoking costs you tons of money, costs you your life, your looks, you even smell worse. You are shunned from all public places (at least in progressive countries) and methods of transportation. So, why do people start smoking today??
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday February 14 2015, @05:20AM
Wrong. Google for "nicotine depression treatment" and you'll see there's a positive in this. If you consider that the "relief" is delivered 7 seconds after you inhale it [wikipedia.org], you can see why so many people get hooked.
Can you get the same effect without smoking? Today, yes. It wasn't so about 30 years ago, when I make the mistake to smoke a cigarette after my brother died: in spite of puking my guts out at my first attempt, I was hooked ever since.
All true, and don't need to tell me about, but...
Again, not generally true. I'm borderline chronically depressive (not enough to kill myself but, for example, I rarely laugh. Not avoiding others, but again not a very social individual).
I tried substituting the cigarettes with eCigs: I needed to abandon it, because the nicotine I was taking was increasing over time (happens with any anti-depressant actually). At least, the "classic" cigarette is self-limiting (as it gets one's throat sore from the smoke).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15 2015, @03:24AM
Nicotine is the only drug that can make you addicted after literally just one hit. [sciencedaily.com] Nothing else can create addiction or dependency that fast, its unique to nicotine.