Posted on 10/25/2021 5:37:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sometimes I’d light a cigarette while I still had one burning in the ashtray so...yes.
What is rarely mentioned is the fact that cancer aside, lung capacity is diminished progressively the longer one smokes. Unlike cancer, which is a sort of crap shoot because of the role luck and genetics play, the damage to breathing capability is not. It is a guarantee. Spend time with a person who has COPD. It is very sobering.
I had a doctor friend tell me one time: Most of the people who smoke do not get lung cancer, but most of the people who get lung cancer are smokers.
I seriously smoked from 17 to 26. And it was having an effect. I am now almost 70 and my doctor says my lungs are as if I had never smoked. But had I not quit, with the problems I was having, I doubt I would have made it past 50. I consider it one of the best decisions I ever made in a life of many dumb ass decisions.
That said, free adults should have the freedom to choose what they do in this regard because all the information has been out there for a long time. It is an unwise, but informed, decision.
“And if they overcame the habit by age 35, their excess risk of cancer death was erased”... Any ‘study’ that makes such a statement should be dismissed outright.
Smoking is bad for you... Period. If you smoke, you should quit... But there is now way to ‘eliminate’ your cancer risk. That’s just not happening. The majority of people who get cancer and die from cancer never smoked a day in their lives and if we eliminated smoking entirely from the earth... People still get cancer.
I quit when i was 37
Living in nyc I went to buy 2 packs of cigs and bloombergs tax made the packs a Dollar and something more. Never smoked again
That buffoon was good for something!
Genetics... It determines a very large part of your health and health risk. Lifestyle choices can improve and cause health risk, but your genes are more important than any of your lifestyle choices.
People get and die from COPD who never smoked a day in their lives... I feel bad for them, because if you smoke at least you have something to blame it on. For the nonsmokers... They have nothing to blame it on, other than their ancestors and possibly, the longevity they got from those ancestors.
The longer you live, the better your chances are of dying from cancer, copd and many other age related diseases.
But there is now way to ‘eliminate’ your cancer risk.
I think they mean that it completely reduces the risk elevated by smoking.
Not supporting smoking, but they say it reduces the risk of getting Covid by 50%.
I read a medical piece from years ago that came to this conclusion:
About two-thirds of your risk for cancer is genetic or inherited, about one-third due to environmental causes which would include anything you do to yourself like smoking.
Nonetheless we do tend to be somewhat simplistic in these discussions in the sense that with smoking for example there’s a lot of problems associated with that that don’t result in lung cancer. And many of those problems are going to happen to most or all smokers to some degree. So when deciding whether or not to smoke it’s wise to consider all the aspects and not just the cancer risk. of course this reasoning applies to a great many things we do to ourselves.
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.