Posted on 07/29/2011 6:16:58 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Quitting smoking leads to weight gain, which may be why they’re after the foodies now. If I were a quitter and now they were coming after my fried chicken and ice cream, I would feel like they were dogging me.
Or how many accidents have been caused because someone knocked the cherry off and it fell between the seats or on their clothing?
But if she smoked and she died, she is among the 600000 annual “smoking-related deaths.” Because you can’t prove it DIDn’t have anything to do with it.
And you know this how?
It's similar to the demonization of driving after a couple of beers: at first it was "alcohol-CAUSED" accidents, but when the number of accidents dropped, they had to move the goalposts, so it became "alcohol INVOLVED". "Alcohol caused" means the driver was unequivocally over the legal BAC limit (though THAT standard is constantly moving too), whereas "alcohol involved" simply means that there was booze in one of the vehicles!
Say you stop off on the way home a pick up a bottle of wine for dinner. Then, after putting the bottle in the trunk, you get t-boned by a blue-hair in a Buick. Neither of you has a drop of alcohol in your system, but there is booze in one of the cars VOILA! "ALCOHOL INVOLVED!"
If you look closely, you'll see that it is the same group of people pushing both these agenda.
If you are correct in your assessment, I will be the first to apologize........something ninny nannies will never do.
If you look closely, you'll see that it is the same group of people pushing both these agenda.
You need not look all that closely, and it is not just these two agendas - all of the nanny-state lovers are part of the the same clique with much of the same funding and all of the same agenda.
Oh, YEAH, I was referencing the tendency to add people to the “smoking related” category if they smoked, no matter what they died of. Not meaning any disrespect to Shelion at all - I miss her terribly on these threads.
Please accept my deepest sincere apologies for jumping to the wrong conclusion.
Feh... nothing to apologize for. You merely asked for clarification. You and Shelion are both top-notch in my book.
Wait, if smoking is not cool, how can voting for a smoker be cool? And if Obama is cool, and HE smokes, why shouldn’t all his little creepy worshippers take up the habit themselves? Not even considering that it’s patriotic to smoke, and every butt saves the children.
I don’t worry for them. Well, only to the extent that they’ve made their peace with their maker. Other than that, they may all go to hell.
It’s called publication bias. The journal articles that get noticed are the ones that get published and the ones that get published are the ones that reject the null hypothesis, indicating that their supposition is correct. “Failed” experiments don’t get follow up funding, even though they are just as or more important than those that “prove” the hypothesis.
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