Posted on 11/12/2007 6:51:35 AM PST by fanfan
According to three doctors at the KS Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, India, writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, giving up smoking can kill you. Arunachalam Kumar, Kasaragod Mallya, and Jairaj Kumar were "struck by the more than casual relationship between the appearance of lung cancer and an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking habit in many, if not most, cases."
In 182 of the 312 cases they had treated, an habitual smoker of at least a pack a day, for at least a quarter-century, had developed lung cancer shortly after he gave up smoking.
They surmised a biological mechanism protects smokers against cancer, which is strengthened by years of determined smoking. When the smoker quits, "a surge and spurt in re-activation of bodily healing and repair mechanisms of chronic smoke-damaged respiratory epithelia is induced and spurred by an abrupt discontinuation of habit," and "goes awry, triggering uncontrolled cell division and tumour genesis."
An evolutionary argument could support this hypothesis. Man is the only animal who cooks his food, and thousands of generations of our ancestors, pent up in smoke-filled caves, could easily account for this biological mechanism.
Since the findings of Kumar, Mallya, and Kumar coincide with my own medical hypothesis, based on my own anecdotal evidence, I hasten to embrace them. Several deceased friends and family, starting with my paternal grandfather, perished shortly after they quit smoking -- not only from lung cancer, but from other causes ranging from previously undiagnosed heart disease to industrial accident.
The same general principle would apply: that a body long accustomed to a (frankly addictive) substance, goes haywire when the substance is removed. In the good old days, people instinctively understood things like that, without the need for medical research. And it was inconceivable that, for instance, hospitals would prevent patients from smoking, who were already medically challenged on other fronts.
Other medical literature has documented other risks of non-smoking, that include neurotic depression, violent irritability, and obscene weight gain. But these tend to be discounted because they lead to death only indirectly.
Likewise, indirect evidence for the dangers of not smoking comes from the 150th anniversary number of Atlantic magazine. P.J. O'Rourke points to (actual, serious) U.S. historical statistics showing that, in the period 1973-94, annual per capita consumption of cigarettes fell from 4,148 to 2,493. In the same period, the incidence of lung and bronchial cancer rose from 42.5 to 57.1 cases per 100,000 population.
In the past I have flagged UN statistics showing that life expectancy was nicely proportional to tobacco consumption, internationally -- so that, for example, Japan and South Korea were respectively first and second in both life expectancy and tobacco consumption. The lowest tobacco consumption was in Third World countries, where we also found some of the shortest life expectancies.
I think we could also find historical statistics showing there is a reliable, worldwide relationship between rising tobacco consumption, and rising life expectancy, nation by nation, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
As Al Gore likes to say, "the science is irrefutable."
The weakness in that last statement being, that there is no such thing as irrefutable science. There is nothing in the whole history of science that is not tentative. And while, in astronomy, I remain convinced that the Earth revolves around the sun, I would not put all my money even on that proposition, but, given attractively long odds, reserve a penny bet on the sun going round the Earth.
If my reader is planning to give up smoking in the face of what I report, then courage to him, and I will avoid saying, "Go ahead, make my day." I am not in the pay of the tobacco lobby -- on the contrary, I seem to be paying them -- and am in principle indifferent to what substances others decide to use or abuse. My dander rises only when they try to interfere with my own freedom, through the childish, petty, and essentially totalitarian public campaigns against harmless smokers -- buttressed by scientific claims weaker than the above.
There is one more hypothesis with which I would like to leave my reader. It is that the kind of quack "science" that was used to ban smoking has now mutated into the kind that is used to flog global warming. It should have been resisted then; it should certainly be resisted now.
On the other hand, I never get sick. People will be catching colds or flu's all around me but for some reason I never catch them.
I have often wondered if my light smoking was the reason. My hypothesis is that my body produces more white blood cells than normal in order to get rid of the smoke. Stopping completely would probably shut down the excess white blood cell production, so i can see why smokers who stopped completely would be more susceptible to disease, especially after years of damage that heavy smoking causes. I could be all wrong of course. Perhaps I never get sick for other reasons?
One other observation, also anecdotal. It seems that recently there are record numbers of people who have allergies, especially to smoke. It makes one wonder how these peoples ancestors survived during the thousands of years where it was common to live in a smoky environment not only for cooking, but for heat. Before the invention of electricity, virtually everyone heated with wood or coal.
I wonder if growing up in an essentially smoke free environment has crippled some peoples immune systems so that as adults, they get inappropriate responses when exposed to even the tiniest amounts of smoke?
Because just like breast cancer may be linked to abortion, the American Cancer Society and Planned Parenthood did nothing to warn those women that there is a link.
American Cancer Society also knows that second hand smoke does NOT cause cancer as proven by two 35 year old research reports from UC - Berkeley and UI - Urbana/Champaign
Are you saying your friend wouldn't have died of cancer if they had kept smoking? If not, then what's the point? Everyone who quits smoking will die of something eventually.
I agree. Some folks just can't think outside the box or think that anecdotal evidence is just stupid. They are really the people that go thru life with their head up their rear; the ones that can't see the forest thru the trees.
While I think that folks who die 5, 10 or 20 years after quitting smoking may be stretching this theory a bit, I think there are too many of us with first hand "anecdotal evidence" that this can be discounted with the wave of a hand.
We should also remember something - lung cancer is and has been for quite a while the number one cancer killer worldwide - among those who smoke AND THOSE WHO DON’T!
Chocolate didn’t work?
Nope. I almost thought of taking up a less dangerous vocation, like snake handling.
I’ve noticed this too, and always figured that somehow (over time) the tars and stuff somehow formed a protective layer in the lungs.
Haven’t heard that one. It’s interesting to think about those men making it to retirement.
“...And my wife quit smoking 3 months ago and I’m wondering now if that was a good idea rather than to just cut down and then gradually quit to avoid a system shock.”
My wife quit cold turkey in 1996 with absolutely no ill effects to date. I wish I could do the same. This article does make one wonder though.
I ceased smoking in the house twenty years ago along with in the car at the same time, and have always made certain to not smoke around others all because of the stink of the damned things. I’ve smoked for 47 years, but despise the smell of it, so I think if I don’t like it others don’t as well LOL.
Probably forms a nice protective layer against oxygen, too. Seems to keep water out pretty well when it’s used in other applications.
Jeeze Now I’m a USA tobacco whore...
Kentucky’s Best cigarettes are made with top quality whole-leaf tobacco. Around here, we refuse to use dust, puffed tobacco or reconstituted tobacco. Other companies may call that stuff their “profit margin” – we call it trash.
We’ve found that you don’t have to add artificial “flavor enhancers” when you start with quality tobacco. Maybe that’s why our customers tell us Kentucky’s Best cigarettes give them a taste they remember from long ago, back when quality was the rule, not the exception.
*Other* cigarettes may contain any of more than 500 chemicals, including arsenic, ammonia and chemicals used to make weed and bug killers, car batteries, paint stripper, lighter fluid and mothballs. Kentucky’s Best cigarettes don’t add chemicals to “improve quality.”
It has been long established that liver cancer develops in former alcoholics about 10 years after cessation of drinking. It has to do with the cell repair process - exactly as the article surmises in the case on smoking.
BTW, not to pile on the anecdotes but my FIL as well died two years after quitting smoking - of lung cancer.
Whole-leaf, top-grade tobacco – the best that we can find. A little chocolate that’s a key ingredient in just about every major brand. Plus quality craftsmanship and a lot of pride in what we do. You’ll taste the difference the first time you light up.
After dinner, you either have a smoke, or sex?
I'm glad I'm not your wife.
*rimshot*
Good post. ;-)
Maybe you are doing them a favour.
If our ancestors almost always had some smoke around them, maybe light smokers have a therapeutic effect on those around them in modern times.
It’s for the children, you know. ;-)
I wonder if growing up in an essentially smoke free environment has crippled some peoples immune systems so that as adults, they get inappropriate responses when exposed to even the tiniest amounts of smoke?
Nobody is allergic to cigarette smoke because it's physically impossible. An allergy is caused by an over reaction of your body's immune system to a protein. Cigarette smoke does not contain any proteins. These same people who cough at a cigarette being lit 100 yards away outdoors never seem to have a problem walking by the back of their idling SUV with the stop global warming bumper sticker on it
Cigarette smoke and smokers give people with miserable lives an excuse to believe they are morally superior to someone else. They are not happy people and sad to say the only joy they get in life is to try and make other people miserable.
Take banning smoking in bars for instance, why would they care what adults do in a bar as they (the anti-smoking gnatzies) don't go to bars because people there are having fun and they are not fun people. Well that's it, other people are having fun and they aren't so the only joy they can get is trying to make people as miserable as they are.
Do you ship to Canada?
better watch out.. you're starting to sound like Jack Larson...
This year, Laramie is sponsoring the Little Miss Springfield Pageant. You see, government regulations prohibit us from advertising on TV. [takes a puff on a cigarette and holds up the box] Ah, that sweet Carolina smoke! But, they can't prohibit us from holding a beauty pageant for little girls aged 7 to 9.
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