.....
I agree. It does help if your spouse doesn't smoke, but Catherine Zeta-Jones was smoking a cigarette next to him aboard their yacht July 22.
Posted on 07/30/2011 7:31:27 AM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta
Actor Michael Douglas was photographed smoking on a yacht last week - less than a year after "beating" stage IV throat cancer.
The Oscar winner appears on the new cover of Star Magazine and in photos inside puffing on what appears to be a hand-rolled cigarette July 21.
He looks tanned and relaxed in the exclusive Star photos, leaning on the yacht's railing while traveling with his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones along the Italian Riviera.
"Are you calling about the photos, because we have no comment," a rep for Douglas' spokesman Allen Burry told the Daily News.
The Hollywood icon, 66, was diagnosed with stage IV throat cancer last August and lost 32 pounds undergoing intensive chemotherapy and radiation.
"I feel good. I feel relieved," the actor told NBC "Today" host Matt Lauer in an interview in January, revealing that his treatment was a success.
"The tumor is gone," he told Lauer. "The odds are with the tumor gone and what I know about this particular type of cancer, that I've got it beat."
"It's rare to return to smoking after something like this, but it's an addiction akin to heroin. It's a physical addiction, not just psychological, and very difficult to break," said Dr. Eric Genden, a Mt. Sinai surgeon.
"It's a bad idea. In patients with a history of carcinoma of the throat, smoking represents an exceptionally high risk to developing recurrence and even dying from the disease."
It's possible Douglas was smoking medical marijuana or another substance other than tobacco, but medical marijuana typically is used to treat loss of appetite and nausea while treatment is ongoing.
Most patients quit any type of smoking because it tends to cause a burning sensation on throat tissue damaged by radiation, Genden said.
It's a really bad idea," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
A friend who graduated from D.O. school suggested a normally healthy person might have 20 pack years before real damage would occur.
You’ve made a couple of very broad, and rather insulting comments here today, and that is so very unlike you, my friend.
Fine, you do not like the smell, I can fully appreciate that, but not all ex-smokers or never smokers feel the same way. In fact I know many who actually enjoy it. One example is a dear friend of ours, a lovely lady who will be 76 next week is a never smoker, yet keeps ashtrays around for anyone who does. She says she enjoys the smell and it reminds her of her late husband, who was a smoker. He was 12 years her senior, and a long time smoker who did NOT die of a smoking related illness, but rather complications from a work related injury.
I’m really surprised you would make such broadbrushed comments.
I quit in late 2002 after a MI and quad bypass. The 8 days sedated in ICU got me over the worst of it. I still ended up with emphysema and 2 years ago I lost half a lung to cancer.
I smoked for years
I quit cold turkey
I began to walk 4 miles per day
I never picked up another cigarette again.
It was my decision to quit.
Bottom line: It is Michael’s business and his decision. Period!!!
To me it’s like shooting yourself in the leg. No fun, only bad.
I always felt quickly worse from it, even at a pack a week level.
I suppose it’s relatively ok once in awhile at a casino while drunk, for the scene. Even then I’d prefer a cigar.
Cigarettes are just a real mystery to me. It seems to take an awful lot of money and work to beat yourself down with them for no payoff short term at all.
.....
I agree. It does help if your spouse doesn't smoke, but Catherine Zeta-Jones was smoking a cigarette next to him aboard their yacht July 22.
Five Possible Benefits From Smoking
Who says smoking cigarettes is so bad ... well, aside from the World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and every medical board and association on the face of the Earth?
But should smokers be fortunate enough to dodge all that cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like, they will be uniquely protected — for reasons unexplained by science — against a handful of diseases and afflictions.
Call it a silver lining in their otherwise blackened lungs. Although long-term smoking is largely a ticket to early death, here are (gulp) five possible benefits from smoking. Breathe deep.
1. Smoking lowers risk of knee-replacement surgery
While smokers might go broke buying a pack of cigarettes, they can at least save money by avoiding knee-replacement surgery. Surprising results from a new study have revealed that men who smoke had less risk of undergoing total joint replacement surgery than those who never smoked.
The study, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, appears in the July issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism. What could be the connection? Knee-replacement surgery was more common among joggers and the obese; smokers rarely jog, and they are less likely to be morbidly obese.
After controlling for age, weight and exercise, the researchers were at a loss to explain the apparent, albeit slight protective effects of smoking for osteoporosis. It could be that the nicotine in tobacco helps prevent cartilage and joint deterioration.
2. Smoking lowers risk of Parkinson’s disease
Numerous studies have identified the uncanny inverse relationship between smoking and Parkinson’s disease. Long-term smokers are somehow protected against Parkinson’s, and it’s not because smokers die of other things earlier. [10 Easy Paths to Self-Destruction]
The most recent, well-conducted study was published in a March 2010 issue of the journal Neurology. Far from determining a cause for the protective effect, these researchers found that the number of years spent smoking, more so than the number of cigarettes smoked daily, mattered more for a stronger protective effect.
Harvard researchers were among the first to provide convincing evidence that smokers were less likely to develop Parkinson’s. In a study published in Neurology in March 2007, these researchers found the protective effect wanes after smokers quit. And they concluded, in their special scientific way, that they didn’t have a clue as to why.
3. Smoking lowers risk of obesity
Smoking — and, in particular, the nicotine in tobacco smoke — is an appetite suppressant. This has been known for centuries, dating back to indigenous cultures in America in the pre-Columbus era. Tobacco companies caught on by the 1920s and began targeting women with the lure that smoking would make them thinner.
A study published in the July 2011 issue of the journal Physiology & Behavior, in fact, is one of many stating that the inevitable weight gain upon quitting smoking is a major barrier in getting people to stop, second only to addiction.
The relationship between smoking and weight control is complex: Nicotine itself acts as both a stimulant and appetite suppressant; and the act of smoking triggers behavior modification that prompts smokers to snack less. Smoking also might make food less tasty for some smokers, further curbing appetite. As an appetite suppressant, nicotine appears to act on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, at least in mice, as revealed in a study by Yale researchers published in the June 10, 2011, issue of the journal Science.
No respectable doctor would recommend smoking for weight control, given the toxic baggage accompanying cigarettes. This recent Yale study, however, does offer an inkling of hope for a safe diet drug to help obese people control their appetites.
4. Smoking lowers risk of death after some heart attacks
Compared with non-smokers, smokers who have had heart attacks seem to have lower mortality rates and more favorable responses to two kinds of therapy to remove plaque from their arteries: fibrinolytic therapy, which is basically medication; and angioplasty, which removes the plaque by inserting balloons or stents into the arteries.
There’s a catch, though. The reason why smokers have heart attacks is that smoke scars the arteries, allowing fat and plaque to build up in the first place. So, one theory as to why smokers do better than non-smokers after such therapies is that they are younger, experiencing their first heart attack approximately 10 years before the non-smoker.
A study published in an August 2005 issue of the American Heart Journal, however, states that age alone is not enough to fully explain the survival differences and that “the smoker’s paradox is alive and well.” No alternative theories have been put forth since.
5. Smoking helps the heart drug clopidogrel work better
Clopidogrel is a drug used to inhibit blood clots for those patients suffering from coronary artery disease and other circulatory diseases leading to strokes and heart attacks. Smoking seems to help clopidogrel do its job better.
A study by Korean researchers in the October 2010 issue of the journal Thrombosis Research builds upon work by Harvard researchers published in 2009 that demonstrates the benefit of smoking at least 10 cigarettes a day. It seems that something in cigarette smoke activates certain proteins called cytochromes, which convert clopidogrel into a more active state.
Again, no respectable doctor is encouraging patients to start smoking to get the most out of clopidogrel. But this and the other four “benefits” of smoking reveal how tobacco — perhaps not unlike other potentially toxic plants — might contain certain chemicals of real therapeutic value.
Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books “Bad Medicine” and “Food At Work.” His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on LiveScience.
ditto, she’s hot now thats NEWSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I agree about walking.
and the right to post my opinion!
Yeah, poor guy has nothing to live for, ugly wife, insane children, poor as a church mouse ... What’s that? ... That beautiful creature is his wife? And those beautiful well-mannered children are his kids? ... Wow! His daddy must have taught him how to be one selfish bastard!
A smoker is polite enough to ask your permission to smoke and instead of thanking him for asking and politely refusing permission, you have to give them a smart assed answer guaranteed to piss most people off. No wonder smokers hate non smokers.
Poor man. It’s tough on his family too.
John W. Campbell Jr. - A Counterblaste to Tobacco
What about leaving a widow and fatherless children?
He is harming them, and it becomes THEIR problem, though I agree it’s not yours and mine.
No, he is NOT harming them. Causing them grief, yes, harming, no. By your reasoning a person who is killed in a car wreck is "harming" his/her families by dying. A smoker only physically harms himself by smoking and it is no one's business, not the government's not yours or any other self appointed control freak's business. Before you ask, no, I am not a smoker.
After I quit smoking, I pretty much used Nicoreten (sic) as a fall back. Got hooked on that and when I see Nicorrete now, I still want to chew the Nicorette.
I get over it by doing something else and purposely thinking about it as much as possible.
Much weirdness about smoking - none of it good. Good luck and prayers for anybody trying to quit and for those who don't think they have a problem.
Studies also showed that big coffee drinkers developed Parkinson’s less than other people.
So you get the shakes one way or the other?
not if you go 100% cold turkey
the symtoms are a medical condition- they can not last longer than a weel (except psychologically)
And once you KNOW the symptoms of withdrawal, it is easier to deal with. Sleeping pills for the insomnia, and valium for the nerves
one weekax- you’ll be off them
I was upstate deer hunting...I was 27 and was huffing and puffing as I climbed up the hills....it pi$$ed me off that I should be so out of breath at 27 ...I quit up there and never looked back...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.