I want to add some additional commentary on this post, because it relates to an experiment I did during one of my college science courses.
I will summarize for convenience. Essentially, what we did for the experiment was to observe the effect of tobacco "juice" (i.e. the loose trimmings from a Marlboro Red cigarette which were soaked in water) on a cell culture where the cells were taken from the inside of our mouths(cheeks) via cotton swabs.
The experiment was to observe the effects of this tobacco juice on the cells over time.
Within 2 weeks of exposure, the cells mutated and were "cancerous" and appeared disfigured and damaged.
Yup. I quit drinking soda based on a swallowing study I did where I had a pH meter in my esophagus. It freaked me out that I was swallowing something more acidic than my stomach so I stopped drinking it. That was back when fat was still considered worse for you than sugar. Thank goodness for slightly unsound science.
>"That was back when fat was still considered worse for you than sugar."
Just a small addition/correction: Back when all fat was considered worse for you. We've since started distinguishing between trans fats, and saturated/unsaturated fats, and various subtypes of those.
Trans fats and saturated fats are still bad, despite what some types would have you believe. As is sugar.
The dose makes the poison. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the same effects with prolonged ultra-high doses caffeine or some other innocuous substance.
The interesting question: is this caused by the tobacco, or is this caused by the fact that the mucous membrane in the mouth normally fully regenerates every 8 days? The cells shouldn't be alive after two weeks.
This title is pure clickbait. Any reason to not replace this BBC article with the "Nature News and Views" article? More informative, less dumbed down, but still accessible.
This reflects what my doctor told me several years ago (four and a half?) when I quit.
He didn’t use the word magic. He did say that after four or five years or so my lungs would be in the same condition they would have been if I had never smoked—but only if I quit then. I’d smoked in the vicinity of a pack a day for close to ten years if I were to give it a rough average.
That said, I was very active in my youth, and worked physical jobs and played live music beside any sedentary work I’ve done. I continue to do so as well.
YMMV.
Edit: I thought I should add that I don’t want this to sound like an endorsement of the body’s ability to endure punishment.
If I could go back I wouldn’t pick up regular smoking as I did. And I wouldn’t start again. I return regularly to the feeling of relief that I’m not so bound to it anymore.
I don’t hate it, and I’d have a cigar, and maybe when I’m an old withered man I’ll pick up pipe tobacco. Who knows. For those who can manage it without getting too regular, good for you—life is short. I wouldn’t tempt myself that way again. Anyway, whisky’s a finer poison in my books—and similar cautions apply. ;)
I would also add that quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Just don't start. Some people don't have a problem quitting. I did.
Yep it took me a few tries as well. It didn’t help that at the time I worked with some bitter people who liked to disparage at every turn: “you never quit, you just stop for a while”. That kind of nonsense.
My doctor was a real motivator, and yet never laid a guilt trip.
Ultimately, taking some time off and feeling as terrible as I needed for few days really made a difference. Not everyone can make that time. I will say that after the first week it was mainly habits and the waning cravings but the best part is that:
It gets easier and easier and easier and then you forget you ever did.
>He did say that after four or five years or so my lungs would be in the same condition they would have been if I had never smoked—but only if I quit then.
I hear statements like this repeatedly and always wondered: if given 5-10 years your lungs can really heal themselves so it's like you never smoked, does that mean you can smoke with no health consequences by stopping when you're middle aged? (before there's any real risk of contracting lung cancer)
Don’t think so, but then it’s always a game of risk multiplied by time. Less chance but not zero risk.
Can’t speak on lung cancer. My mum died in 2013 from non-Hodgson’s lymphoma and she only smoked for a few years in her early twenties. She was diagnosed in her forties and it didn’t actually get her until her early seventies.
The risk there is highest in current smokers, lowest in non-smokers, and past smokers are in the middle.
Apparently research has shown that each cigarette smoked can damage DNA; where build up of damage in the same cell is what leads to cancer. So your lungs can recover. Your lung* DNA, less so.
Yeah, it’s like playing cellular Russian roulette, as I understand it. The gun has a lot of empty chambers, but that one mutated cell they goes nuclear can be all it takes.
> It's about statistics - the longer you smoke and the more you smoke, the more likely you will be to get cancer.
Exactly, a simple metric used is the "pack year"[0] which is a way to represent overall exposure.
My mother died of lung cancer which sent me down many a rabbit hole, and I don't really understand what is surprising in the linked article. It's been known that risk of cancer decreases after one stops smoking, even if it never recedes to baseline (while asymptotically approaching it, basically). You have damaged cells which might become carcinogenic, or they might not, but those cells can also just die and be replaced by healthy cells.
The more you've smoked, though, the more damaged cells you've caused, so the more land mines you've got floating around your body.
I think there are cost aspects to it; athletes gets broken bone all the times without grave QoL consequences after full recoveries, doesn’t mean it’s free of charge or it’s okay normal thing.
During that healing period, your quality of life can significantly suffer.
There's a "Smoker's cough" associated with people who smoke, but also a more serious "Smoker's cough" for some past smokers who are quitting. It's loud, obnoxious, and it feels like your insides are going to turn out if you cough one more time.
If you were a heavy smoker, like I once was, you can't breathe quickly or else you'll go into a coughing spell. Exercising and otherwise enjoying the world on foot is nearly impossible. There's not much you can do to make it better except wait -- Depending on your past smoking habits, sometimes years.
I do wonder if light smokers could get away with it, though.
My dad smoked a pack a day from his teens until age 36. Quit drinking alcohol (another risk factor) around the same time. Took up long-distance cycling at 45. At 55, his doctor was gobsmacked: his lungs were absolutely clear. At 60, healthier than most people half his age, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Died less than a year later.
Smoking increases risk of cancer in the mouth and throat, not just the lungs. Your lungs aren't the whole story.
5 years after quitting: 12.12 times that of a never smoker
5 to 10 years after quitting: 11.77 times
10 to 15 years after quitting: 7.81 times
15 to 25 years after quitting: 5.88
Over 25 years since quitting: 3.85
—
https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...
>does that mean you can smoke with no health consequences by stopping when you're middle aged?
The answer to that is clearly no.
Young people aren't immune to cancer; they're also increasing their risk of developing cancer while they smoke...
Additionally, this study only speaks of lung health. There is also lots of evidence out there showing smoking adversely affects cardiovascular health... whether you heal from those effects is another matter.
On a personal anecdote, both my grandfathers smoked their entire lives - and both had thoracic aortic aneurysms (one actually had his rupture and survived miraculously despite a 97-99% mortality rate). Anyhow, tobacco use is a risk factor for developing thoracic aneurysms - and I can't see how one's aorta would ever go completely back to normal after developing such a malformation...
The effects of quitting have been part of the quit smoking campaigns here (https://www.quit.org.au/articles/the-health-benefits-of-quit...), so the news that your body recovers somewhat is hardly new. Also these positive ads are the only ones that had an effect on me compared to the usual vilification they contain.
I've been switching to vaping lately which has cut down my smoking a lot, especially when I'm drinking. I plan on switching to 100% vaping at some point and after a couple of months it's starting to happen naturally more and more. Maybe if I get that far I'll lower the nicotine levels and try quitting, but for now it's nice to smell a bit better, breath a bit better and not have a burning hole in my wallet.
Wow that's fantastic! Especially the part about it helping motivate people to quit. The 'not all hope is lost' if you simply stop now (simply =/= easy).
As someone who lost their grandfather to smoking/cancer, I'll take any reason for someone to quit.
Most of the people, especially early smokers, who wouldn't be bothered to read the article and just go by the title and think - "I knew that, smoking is actually fine!" - and would puff away to glory like never before.
While this is the first sentence in the article:
> Your lungs have an almost "magical" ability to repair the cancerous mutations caused by smoking - but only if you stop, say scientists.
It actually says more like "smoking damages 95%+ of your lungs [1], but more than half of that damage can be undone if you quit". I think that's pretty impressive, even if there's still a lot of lasting damage.
[1] "The overwhelming majority of cells taken from a smoker's airways had been mutated by tobacco, with cells containing up to 10,000 genetic alterations."
Wow, this is a magically irresponsible headline by BBC, especially considering the rest of the article. Without a quantifier, the implication is that all damage is healed, which further down is refuted by the buried lede:
> In people who quit, up to 40% of their cells looked just like those from people who had never smoked.
Or, at least 60% of the lungs still resembled the lungs of a current smoker.
I quit 8 years ago after 25 years of a pack a day, yes my lungs are better, so is my sense of smell and taste. Unfortunately my heart and teeth won't magically repair themselves, neither will the scars on my legs from poor circulation due to my hardened arteries.
Worst of all might be the fact that my bank account will never be what it could gave been if only I didn't start, get addicted then squander the thousands of dollars a year on something that was killing me for over two decades.
Aint life funny that way? Nope, nothing funny about it, just regret, remorse and sadness.
If you don't smoke, please don't start it truly is self imposed misery.
I also smoked when I was younger, because advertising gave me the information that it was “cool”, but hey, if it weren’t for the advertising I never would have known!
I wish young people, under 25 or so, could live a couple of days in your shoes or my moms shoes. She was an alcoholic with a pack a day habit for 20+ years. She isn’t 60 yet and she has a litany of health issues: degenerative disk disease, hardened arteries (can barely walk), heart disease, chronic nerve pain, many secondary issues from there. No exercise and a poor diet, depression, etc. it seems so innocent like you have forever ahead of you. Then 5, 10, 20 years roll by and your body is fucked. It’s so hard to think just one cigarette, one drink, or one hit of a drug can ruin you, but for some people that is all it takes. Young minds just don’t have the tools to weigh the opportunity cost. I am not saying it should be illegal or anything (the opposite), but it really sucks and there are plenty of regrettable stories like yours and my mothers.
> It’s so hard to think just one cigarette, one drink, or one hit of a drug can ruin you, but for some people that is all it takes.
I was taught this growing up, but I don't really believe it anymore. Nobody is addicted to drugs or alcohol or cigarettes just from one use. The people who become addicted are the ones who are using it to escape their lives, and continue to use the drug for the same reason they used it in the first place. After a while of this continued use, then they might become addicted. But the significant factor is their environment and mental state, not that they decided to try something once.
This is true. But most of us are not fully aware of the vulnerabilities in our own mental state. Nearly everyone is walking through life with some issue, hurt, scar, and many have trauma that is not fully understood.
In that context, certain things that may seem benign to try can easily progress into a stronger habit, then a dependency and pave the way to a real addiction.
I have had less than 1 pack of cigarettes in my life, none in the past decade, and yet I still get cravings.
By comparison 3 heavily medicated days in the hospital plus 1 week on heavy Opiods and 2 weeks light Opiods and that’s a vastly lesser craving. So, no addiction is not really just about long term exposure.
PS: Addiction is also not simply a habit, though habits make addiction harder to deal with.
It's more like that one cigarette represents opening the door to the addiction within the context of your day to day life. Almost everyone I know who smokes does it first in a certain context and then it eventually persists through the rest of life due to the cravings.
They started smoking when working at the mines, on boats, or when they worked hospitality, or when they hang out with a certain friendship group. Saying yes that first time, allows it to begin and develop. Because you're often in that context due to work/life you will come up against that decision point again and again, quickly becoming addicted through repetition. But what keeps you there for life is the craving for nicotine.
So abstinence is a worthwhile goal still, and especially if the opportunity to smoke comes up at somewhere you'll be regularly.
Starting smoking while in an environment with smokers helps you socialize and be part of an ingroup.
When you leave that context, all you've got left is a costly habit that's a pain to quit.
But, not saying yes at that point might have cost you some chances to socialize and create some bonds with other smokers.
And you can still find places where being a smoker will help you socialize. Ex: in places where smoking is banned in bars, going out for a smoke is a pretty good way to start up a conversation with a perfect stranger.
> Starting smoking while in an environment with smokers helps you socialize and be part of an ingroup.
Some coworkers at my old work quit smoking and also had to give up coffee. The connection was so strong they couldn't have one without the other. And the socializing out back in the smoking area was also a big part of it.
It also can cause friction at work. I've worked with smokers who are practically bouncing with energy. But they were crabby and combative when their nicotine levels were low. Then ten minutes later back to bouncy and cheery, it was exhausting to be around. I also estimated the 10 or 15 minute smoke breaks meant that my coworker made $5/hour more than me when were actually paid the same rate. He was adamant they were not breaks it was just a "quick smoke" but he was gone for 10 or 15 minutes every hour.
>I also estimated the 10 or 15 minute smoke breaks meant that my coworker made $5/hour more than me when were actually paid the same rate. He was adamant they were not breaks it was just a "quick smoke" but he was gone for 10 or 15 minutes every hour
That doesn't sound right; the pattern I've generally seen for pack(s)-a-day people is they take similar smoke breaks as pack-a-week people -- something like once every few hours. But they'll smoke multiple cigarettes in that break. This would also make sense if you imagine nicotine decrease rate as constant, but number of cigarettes required to hit "satisfied" as steadily-increasing, though I don't know if that's the case.
Additionally, IME, smoking or not, I've noticed that most people follow the pattern of
1. Do a decent chunk of work for a few hours
2. Dick around for 20 minutes, especially if they just finished something notable
where that 20 minutes get spent on coffee breaks, smoke breaks, chatting around, etc.
Most of the "hard workers" spend more total hours, not more continuous hours, as far as I've seen. Of course, intentional abuse of the break is another matter, but that's independent of smoking
Nicotine is different, it's arguably the most addictive drug and is incredibly hard to kick. No one should ever try nicotine, even if plenty of people, myself included, have tried and gotten out unscathed. The fact is trying nicotine is a really bad risk, if you do get hooked it's a massive burden. Alcohol or weed or caffeine, some of the other most common drugs, are all less deadly and less addictive
That's incredibly wrong. You don't see people ruining their lives from nicotine consumption through snus, chewing gum and non-adulterated vaping (smoking≠nicotine consumption), but plenty of people ruin their lives and the lives around them due to alcohol.
Nicotine can be just as harmless as caffeine. Personally I don't find nicotine very addictive at all, but even if it were super addictive it's all about how you consume it. [1] Nobody cares about how many people are addicted to caffeine, because the main consumption method of caffeine is pretty safe (coffee).
Caffeine is actually mixed with meth in ya ba (popular in Thailand) [2], but that doesn't mean that caffeine ruins lives. When you say that nicotine is deadly you're conflating the drug with something completely separate. It's sort of like saying that air is deadly, because it could kill you if you inject a lot of it into your veins.
I'm so thankful I quit smoking and switched to snus. The health risks are substantially more tolerable for me. I could smoke an entire pack of cigarettes in a single day for a cost of $6. I use maybe half of a package of snus every day and it costs me $3.
At this point I'm just happy I can breathe properly.
I can smoke a cigarette or cigar socially, periodically, have done so for years, and never experience a craving. However, alcohol calls to me like Odysseus's sirens.
I have friends who are precisely the opposite: hopelessly jonesing for cigarettes, but have no problem grabbing a few beers a month with friends.
This is not merely anecdata - individual susceptibility has been documented in the literature, as well.
> It’s so hard to think just one cigarette, one drink, or one hit of a drug can ruin you
This sort of drug education is actively harmful for exactly the reason that you mention: For most people it does not work that way and when people encounter things that they thought are true and that turned out to be lies, trust in whatever else you told them is going to evaporate.
My Mum smoked a pack a day for 30 years, quit when she was about 50, and passed away a year ago from Lung Cancer at the age of 67.
The kicker with lung cancer is that it doesn't really have any symptoms, and most people don't know they've got it until the cancer has metastasized and shows up somewhere else. That's more-or-less a death sentence.
Please do yourself a favor and get tested every ~6 months. (I know there are a lot of people that say false positives do more harm than good, and I still believe you're better to get tested if you smoked a pack a day for >10 years)
What is the basis of this recommendation? I appreciate the desire to catch lung cancer early, but I dont think your suggestion is particularly based on evidence.
I am by no means a lung cancer expert, but currently there is contention about whether lung cancer screening in smokers is worthwhile, and I doubt at 6 monthly intervals. Some studies have shown benefits from screening for smokers, but I dont think any high quality evidence exist which shows a clear benefit of screening. There are options for screening, chest xray, CT chest. A CT chest is more sensitive than a chest xray but doing it every 6 months is going to cause much more harm than good.
My more general point is that these are recommendations which need to be evidence based, and doing more harm than good through false positives, excess radiation exposure, etc is a real risk. I dont think its helpful to make suggestions that are not based on evidence.
Interesting find! I have had a quick skim. Couple of quick points:
a) it was published yesterday, which means there is insufficient time to have a good critical appraisal.
b) looking at the confidence intervals, although there is significance in men, there is not one in men, and the confidence interval is quite wide
c) all cause mortality is similar in both groups despite screening
d) the follow up is only 10 years after first CT. the effect of radiation from these multiple CTs is unlikely to have reached maximum effect in damage to tissues/new neoplasms. This may also explain the increased non lung cancer mortality.
e) no mention is made of morbidity (although I might have missed it) which is a huge importance.
Overall, it’s unsurprising that in a group screened regularly for lung cancer that lung cancer incidence increases but mortality drops. The problem is the other effects of screening which this paper doesn’t seem to focus on.
I don’t think this actually shows screening is particularly worth it especially given it’s caveats.
that is because the residual carcinogens remain even if lung functionality returns to normal and the lungs appear normal. Very similar to asbestos cancer that occurs decades after exposure in otherwise healthy individuals.
Not to undermine your point, just an opposite case. My mother is 70, smoked a packet a day for about 40 tears, last 10 years about 7 or 8 a day and she is healthy as a horse. Last check ups 4 months ago. It really all depends.
I smoked for 24 years from 14 and up an average of half a pack a day. I switched to e-cigarettes so I haven't touched a cigarette in more than 2 years and probably never will. Aside from tooth stains that seem to go away I never had any of the problems you had. I am a bit over 40 years old.
I don't stink like an ashtray and the smell of other smokers turns my stomach upside down and yet I am still under the spell of nicotine via ... e-cigs. Should I force myself to quit? Again, I haven't experienced any of the symptoms you describe above and smoked for a nearly the same period albeit just half a pack a day...
Every one is different, and you did less damage thankfully. Now you’ve made a significant change for the better. Why not continue on that path by slowly weaning yourself off it? Besides the health angle it’s merely a waste of money and support of a shady industry. Take those funds and perhaps treat yourself to something positive.
Whatever else may be in various vape juices, nicotine itself is about as harmful as caffeine. A mild stimulant, addictive, (as far as we know) harmless in normal doses, and will kill you instantly if you get a few grams at once. IIRC caffeine isn't a good pesticide tho, whereas nicotine is great, so YMMV if you're an aphid.
Caffeine works great on many mammals though, which is how you end up with your dog in the ER if you aren’t good at keeping things like chocolate or coffee beans out of reach.
Humans are just exceptionally good at metabolizing both.
What is mysterious about them? We've known they're things like formaldehyde, flavorings, and additives to help keep them from burning out of control (and thus starting fires).
Nicotine alone increases chances for diabetes, and in mice, it produces inflammation of the pancreas even after quitting.
Nicotine alone is probably better than tobacco, but by how much, we are not sure.
Nicotine alone fucks with my hand joints -- whenever I go back to NTR my hand joints, my thumb joints hurt like hell; it takes about two- three months after I completely quit nicotine for the pain to subside.
I was completely addicted to nicotine, and e-cigs couldn’t reproduce the hit from smoked ones.
After faffing two years with patches and liquids I took the Varenicline route... it was supposed to last 10 days and i stayed on it one full month but eventually I literally forgot to light up.
Anything made from natural sources will be contaminated to some degree. The only thing that should be (relatively) clean is fully synthetic vape stuff.
I tried to switch to vaping high nic (20mg liquid) - i think i may have scarring on my wind pipe (my throat still hurts from vaping that high nic, and breathing is still sometimes painful, which is pretty bad news)
Lungs do recover, but dont count on it. Quit today, and take it seriously.
Watch thank you for smoking, its great for stopping.
Becareful with high nic. Dad started getting high blood pressure from vaping 24mg for 2-4 years. He's lowered it to 6-12mg solutions and have gotten better. His previous habit was about 2 packs a week, and in high stress situations a pack a day.
24mg is so high, i started with 6mg and then went to 3mg. For me the whole point is to smoke the least amount of nicotine and try to keep it healthy (will try quitting soon as well).
One of my friends from decades ago had asthma right through his teenage years, and was extremely thin and weedy. Couldn't exercise much without coughing fits and similar.
He took up swimming (!), and although it was slow going at first he eventually developed good lung capacity. And became a body builder. :)
Suspecting the same thing would work for anyone with not much (or damaged) lung capacity.
Vaping + BJJ helped me finally stop. I finally stopped vaping after a few months when I realized I was hitting a plateau with conditioning for BJJ.
I smoked for 23 years and was diagnosed with COPD at about year 17. I still have serious lung issues but they do get better, slowly. Also I want to say that my body has adapted to function better in lower oxygen availability environment - as long as I don't burst cardio over a level I'm not accustomed to, I can keep it up for hours esp. endurance
I smoked when drinking (maybe 2-3 packs/week) throughout my 20s and if smoking wasn't a death wish I still would. I enjoyed smoking and I enjoyed the camaraderie of those who would escape outside the party or pub to escape the noise and have a chat and a smoke.
It's been a long time since I've smoked. I've lost people close to me and will soon lose another due to lung cancer or emphysema. Smoking sucks, but I do miss those quite moments outside in the cool air with a cigarette.
Never smoked. The walk to a Melbourne CBD coffee place seems to have the same function of socialising with colleagues. It's definitely something we look forward to, and we have some seriously good coffee places as well.
It's a shame we have to walk past / through so many people smoking on the sidewalk though. It really is quite a disgusting habit.
That temptation subsides with time. I wouldnt recommend it to someone who just quit, but I havent bummed a cigarette yet (also ex smoker, quit 4-5 years ago)
If you work in a smoke-filled bar for 20 years or something, second-hand smoke is probably bad for you although the evidence for even that is much weaker than originally claimed.
Second-hand smoke outdoors in open air has very little in evidence to support claims that it's going to do much to you.
Yea but if you've ever been a regular smoker then successfully quit, the smell is infuriating because 1) it smells SO disgusting unless it's something like pipe tobacco or American Spirits 2) the temptation to have one, while brief, is strong
1 and 2 combine for a moment of micro-anger
Whether or not second-hand smoke is carcinogenic or otherwise detrimental, the smell alone should force a public ban.
Or my solution: let businesses determine whether or not they want to allow smoking and for the most part the non-smokers will self-segregate to the non-smoking establishments just to avoid smelling like a cancerous ashtray.
I also smoked for about eight years, quit several years back now. the funny thing is I just can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke now, it seems even worse than before I started.
same here. smoking gives such a jolt of stimulation that you cannot get elsewhere, for that moment of smoking all your troubles are lifted, except you are slowly killing yourself too. The instant delivery of nicotine via smoking is why it does that. There is no other way to replicate it and is why it is so addicting.
I’m reading Tig Notaro’s autobiographical book and at one point she’s demonstrating how well young her was doing out on her own by listing her budget.
Her cigarette budget was 80% of her pretty frugal food budget. If she hadn’t been smoking she wouldn’t have had to put so much time and effort into managing her food budget.
I wonder how much and how many ways our situation would have been better when I was a kid if my dad hadn’t smoked the entire time. Fucker used to hotbox us in the winter, too.
Note that this study only focuses on lung cancer. It studies genetic damage to the bronchial epithelial cells. It does not study other diseases caused by smoking, like COPD which involves lung performance getting gradually worse until you die from suffocation.
COPD is actually cause of more deaths [1] than lung cancer and it does NOT get better if you stop smoking. It can only be slowed down, e.g. if you stop smoking.
Not lung cancer per se; the paper focuses only on reversal of tumor mutation burden of the cells that line the lungs and airways. Alas the popular press summary implies concomittant reversal the carcinogenic damage of smoking -- which 60+ years of clinical experience refutes, and the research paper itself also refines:
"
The higher risk of lung cancer in ex-smokers compared with non-smokers is reflected in their high mutation burden and the signature of smoking-associated mutations in most of their lung cells (similar to the cellular profile of current smokers). Although ex-smokers have a high risk of developing lung cancer, their risk is reduced compared with that of current smokers, and this lowering depends on the length of time of smoking cessation1. Why this is the case has been hard to explain. However, perhaps the most surprising result of Yoshida and colleagues’ work might offer a clue: in 5 out of 6 ex-smokers, 20–50% of the cells had a low mutation burden that was similar to the profile of non-smokers of the same age range.
"
> Not lung cancer per se; the paper focuses only on reversal of tumor mutation burden of the cells that line the lungs and airways.
The main cause of lung cancer is precisely that mutation burden that the paper studies. From what I read, most lung cancers stem from mutations of bronchial epithelial cells instead of mutations in the alveoles or other parts of the lung.
The mutation burden is both the cause of lung cancer and can advance the disease by further mutations leading to accelerated growth/metasthazing behaviour/etc.
My grandmother smoked for 40 years, stopped in her early 60s. Sill died from COPD and lung cancer in her early 80s and was miserable for the last 5 years of her life.
I started smoking on the day of my 16th birthday, which, at the time and place, was the legal smoking age. It was irresistible for a high school kid with a job. By the end of that first pack I was completely hooked and smoking would be a permanent part of daily life.
I only smoked for about a year before deciding to quit. Unfortunately, I took me 12 years to finish quitting.
During that period of my physical prime (ages 18 to 26), I couldn't climb a flight of stairs or ride a bike without getting completely winded. Any sort of physical exertion would result in gasping, coughing up phlegm, and seeing stars. A pick-up game of basketball or street hockey was out of the question.
I finally kicked it at age 30, 14 years after I had started. Although it took a while, by age 35 I could physically do things my 20-year-old self could only dream of. Like riding a bike up a hill, or exerting oneself at the gym.
I'm now in my mid-40s, and while the rest of body is now deteriorating at an alarming rate, my lungs are quite literally the only part of my body I never think about. I'm physically stronger and healthier in my mid-40s than I was at age 20.
> During that period of my physical prime (ages 18 to 26), I couldn't climb a flight of stairs or ride a bike without getting completely winded. Any sort of physical exertion would result in gasping, coughing up phlegm, and seeing stars.
I started running when I was probably smoking 10 a day and was in the best shape of my life up to that point. If you don’t do any exercise and you smoke you’re likely to be in pretty awful shape. But you can easily smoke and be in much better shape than people who don’t exercise. The bar is very low.
>couldn't climb a flight of stairs or ride a bike without getting completely winded. Any sort of physical exertion would result in gasping, coughing up phlegm, and seeing stars
How did society get on just fine when almost everybody smoked? Is this reaction an outlier?
Not everybody smoked back then, you still stinked worse than pile of shit and it costed you quite a bit. Look at some old photos. Unless one worked hard manually, almost all guys had thin hands, visible bellies, a bit hunched back and other signs of unhealthy lifestyle.
Most of them didn't live till 80 unless they had very good eating habits or some manual hobbies.
My grandparents are 92 and 93. All of their colleagues from work, all of their friends, siblings are gone. They had a healthy workout of managing garden, raising kids, collecting mushrooms in the forest, occasional walk or hike in mountains. Steady life. Not much drinking, no smoking (grandpa quit when he was still young, my father forced him). I believe daily chores and manual work helps to keep the body well. Its not about intensity but regularity.
You see all the old folks who live long, but for every one of them there are many more who died because of bad luck (decisions, genes) and bad habits.
Even serious athletes used to smoke. Here's a famous photo [0] from the Tour de France of the cyclists smoking in the 1920s. The accepted wisdom was it "opened up your lungs", which might even be correct if you're already a habitual smoker. And there are plenty more anecdotes of elite footballers, tennis players etc being heavy smokers up until the 80s or later.
One of my roommates is a triathlete and while he's not amazingly successful, his body is clearly naturally athletic and simply completing a triathlon is in my mind quite an accomplishment. In his mid-30s, serious alcoholic and smokes a few Newports a day along with some CBD blunts a few days a week.
I told him he wasn't going to be invincible for ever, though. But like me he probably won't listen until he gets some kind of diagnosis or coughs up blood or something.
Some people seem to have a more pronounced bodily reaction to smoking. Your story reads a bit extreme tough. This reminds me of a story that went the other way round. When I walked up a small hill in my home town with my non-smoking ex-girlfriend she ended up asking for a break because she was exhausted and breathing noticably hard. while I was completely calm walking next to her with a cig in my hand.
This isn't to promote smoking while taking a walk.
But it seems lung capacity is pretty much different from person to person, and sometimes smokers are actually more fit then non-smokers.
One thing the article doesn’t mention is what stopping means. I can guess the more time passes the better the healing but if they said after x years after stopping the effect is profound.
BBC's quality is very shit "as of late" (more like the past 5 years at least).
This has been known for years if not decades(even more to actual smokers).It's not magic, it's the human body.
It's the reason why people still smoke even though they know it's bad (usually people with very high physical activity: drivers, etc).People with less physical activity can drop smoking faster because they're tenfold more affected by it.
Smoking is bad,especially if one does very little physical activity.There's a very deep psychological explanation for people's desire to smoke (besides entourage,desire to 'fit in',etc), which is that people literally forget to breathe in our societies.This is due to a long list of reasons: sedentary lives, stress, imposed 'time' schedules that force us to deny the needs of our bodies, less desire to breathe due to low quality of oxygen,etc.
BBC using the word magically here is very hypocritical, knowing that they'd jump to disprove any narratives that contradict their own agendas at any given time.BBC knows this is not magic, but then again mass-media in US and other places is thankfully dying, sparing our lives from the miserable, garbage tier articles of this kind.
Well this is interesting, but of course lots of smokers never quit and you only need one cell to turn into a cancer and kill you.
On a related note, I think the demonstration that lung cells and lung cancers bear the stigmata of tobacco related mutagenesis has some significance to the legal liability of Big Tobacco. With this data one can show that a particular cancer in a particular person began from a single cell which was mutated by tobacco exposure. This is one level up from saying tobacco merely increases the risk of cancer on average, which is always open to the counter-argument that some other factor could have caused the particular cancer in the particular person. Whole genome sequencing of tumour and germline DNA can be had for about $5k these days plus analysis costs, so a class action suit or even individual suits are very feasible. There will be no shortage of oncologists and genomics people happy to help out with this.
I pick up smoking a few in a gap of a few months. Then I feel guilty and stop for a few months. I have been smoking about 50 cigs year. Truth is I don't think I can really quit. Forget addiction, I just like it that much. It is so much fun. I remember my first cig. It was so much fun. That's all it took
A lot of people smoke in Portland, Oregon and Oslo, Norway. At least that is my impression as I don’t have any facts or figures. But of the people I do see smoking, a significant portion of them are young. Another interesting to me observation is the way cigarettes smoke smells in Portland vs. Oslo. I don’t smoke, and don’t enjoy the smell and damage it does to the environment. If only people could properly dispose of their cigarette butts and snooze packets.
I stopped smoking almost a year ago, having smoked heavily (~25/D) from 16-25. Quitting was the best decision of my life so far: I run up stairs without thinking, my senses are sharpened and I generally feel way better than before.
But most importantly, I don't have the ffing urge to smoke a cigarette whenever I have five minutes of time, and especially when I don't have those five minutes.
I get up in the morning and just drink an espresso, I barely use my balcony anymore.
I work in concentrated periods of 2-4 hours, because you know what? That smoking break you need to stay creative, it's of course just a convenient lie to yourself.
I go to parties and can stay inside for as long as I want to, and I still get to talk to people.
I like to say i woke up and the urge was gone, but that isn't the full truth. The days before I quit I had extreme anxiousness and couldn't sleep, thinking about how much I love life and what plans I have and how I want to have children - and how stupid it is to inhale smoke that kills you and doesn't even taste that good in exchange. I didn't want to die.
Next day, halfway through the second one, I noticed they really don't taste good and decided to quit.
Possible that the mutations have some sort of selective advantage while smoking which ceases to matter once quit. The non-mutated ones become again the one that express the more favorable genome for the current environment and take over from there.
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] threadIt looks like magic relative to the current theory, but it’s still not exactly good
I will summarize for convenience. Essentially, what we did for the experiment was to observe the effect of tobacco "juice" (i.e. the loose trimmings from a Marlboro Red cigarette which were soaked in water) on a cell culture where the cells were taken from the inside of our mouths(cheeks) via cotton swabs.
The experiment was to observe the effects of this tobacco juice on the cells over time.
Within 2 weeks of exposure, the cells mutated and were "cancerous" and appeared disfigured and damaged.
This was terrifying to see up close.
So he was probably healthier even though it was based on scare tactics.
Just a small addition/correction: Back when all fat was considered worse for you. We've since started distinguishing between trans fats, and saturated/unsaturated fats, and various subtypes of those.
Trans fats and saturated fats are still bad, despite what some types would have you believe. As is sugar.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00165-7
The original journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1961-1
He didn’t use the word magic. He did say that after four or five years or so my lungs would be in the same condition they would have been if I had never smoked—but only if I quit then. I’d smoked in the vicinity of a pack a day for close to ten years if I were to give it a rough average.
That said, I was very active in my youth, and worked physical jobs and played live music beside any sedentary work I’ve done. I continue to do so as well.
YMMV.
Edit: I thought I should add that I don’t want this to sound like an endorsement of the body’s ability to endure punishment.
If I could go back I wouldn’t pick up regular smoking as I did. And I wouldn’t start again. I return regularly to the feeling of relief that I’m not so bound to it anymore.
I don’t hate it, and I’d have a cigar, and maybe when I’m an old withered man I’ll pick up pipe tobacco. Who knows. For those who can manage it without getting too regular, good for you—life is short. I wouldn’t tempt myself that way again. Anyway, whisky’s a finer poison in my books—and similar cautions apply. ;)
- 7 years without a stoge.
My doctor was a real motivator, and yet never laid a guilt trip.
Ultimately, taking some time off and feeling as terrible as I needed for few days really made a difference. Not everyone can make that time. I will say that after the first week it was mainly habits and the waning cravings but the best part is that:
It gets easier and easier and easier and then you forget you ever did.
I hear statements like this repeatedly and always wondered: if given 5-10 years your lungs can really heal themselves so it's like you never smoked, does that mean you can smoke with no health consequences by stopping when you're middle aged? (before there's any real risk of contracting lung cancer)
There are many health consequences - lung health is just one
Not sure its worth wagering on it.
Can’t speak on lung cancer. My mum died in 2013 from non-Hodgson’s lymphoma and she only smoked for a few years in her early twenties. She was diagnosed in her forties and it didn’t actually get her until her early seventies.
The risk there is highest in current smokers, lowest in non-smokers, and past smokers are in the middle.
* mouth, pharynx, nose / sinuses, larynx, esophagus, liver, pancreas, stomach, kidney, bowel, ovary, bladder, cervix ...
The effects are not cumulative.
It's about statistics - the longer you smoke and the more you smoke, the more likely you will be to get cancer.
Exactly, a simple metric used is the "pack year"[0] which is a way to represent overall exposure.
My mother died of lung cancer which sent me down many a rabbit hole, and I don't really understand what is surprising in the linked article. It's been known that risk of cancer decreases after one stops smoking, even if it never recedes to baseline (while asymptotically approaching it, basically). You have damaged cells which might become carcinogenic, or they might not, but those cells can also just die and be replaced by healthy cells.
The more you've smoked, though, the more damaged cells you've caused, so the more land mines you've got floating around your body.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack-year
There's a "Smoker's cough" associated with people who smoke, but also a more serious "Smoker's cough" for some past smokers who are quitting. It's loud, obnoxious, and it feels like your insides are going to turn out if you cough one more time.
If you were a heavy smoker, like I once was, you can't breathe quickly or else you'll go into a coughing spell. Exercising and otherwise enjoying the world on foot is nearly impossible. There's not much you can do to make it better except wait -- Depending on your past smoking habits, sometimes years.
I do wonder if light smokers could get away with it, though.
Smoking increases risk of cancer in the mouth and throat, not just the lungs. Your lungs aren't the whole story.
— The risk was as follows:
5 years after quitting: 12.12 times that of a never smoker 5 to 10 years after quitting: 11.77 times 10 to 15 years after quitting: 7.81 times 15 to 25 years after quitting: 5.88 Over 25 years since quitting: 3.85 — https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...
The answer to that is clearly no.
Young people aren't immune to cancer; they're also increasing their risk of developing cancer while they smoke...
Additionally, this study only speaks of lung health. There is also lots of evidence out there showing smoking adversely affects cardiovascular health... whether you heal from those effects is another matter.
On a personal anecdote, both my grandfathers smoked their entire lives - and both had thoracic aortic aneurysms (one actually had his rupture and survived miraculously despite a 97-99% mortality rate). Anyhow, tobacco use is a risk factor for developing thoracic aneurysms - and I can't see how one's aorta would ever go completely back to normal after developing such a malformation...
I've been switching to vaping lately which has cut down my smoking a lot, especially when I'm drinking. I plan on switching to 100% vaping at some point and after a couple of months it's starting to happen naturally more and more. Maybe if I get that far I'll lower the nicotine levels and try quitting, but for now it's nice to smell a bit better, breath a bit better and not have a burning hole in my wallet.
As someone who lost their grandfather to smoking/cancer, I'll take any reason for someone to quit.
While this is the first sentence in the article:
> Your lungs have an almost "magical" ability to repair the cancerous mutations caused by smoking - but only if you stop, say scientists.
I really think BBC should have changed the title.
That's a nice way to say "smoking destroys 60% of your lungs."
Up to 40% after what time frame? By the end of the study? Was the study a few months? 5 years? Does it continue to get better or just stop at 40%?
[1] "The overwhelming majority of cells taken from a smoker's airways had been mutated by tobacco, with cells containing up to 10,000 genetic alterations."
Your semantics are baiting....
> In people who quit, up to 40% of their cells looked just like those from people who had never smoked.
Or, at least 60% of the lungs still resembled the lungs of a current smoker.
Worst of all might be the fact that my bank account will never be what it could gave been if only I didn't start, get addicted then squander the thousands of dollars a year on something that was killing me for over two decades.
Aint life funny that way? Nope, nothing funny about it, just regret, remorse and sadness.
If you don't smoke, please don't start it truly is self imposed misery.
I was taught this growing up, but I don't really believe it anymore. Nobody is addicted to drugs or alcohol or cigarettes just from one use. The people who become addicted are the ones who are using it to escape their lives, and continue to use the drug for the same reason they used it in the first place. After a while of this continued use, then they might become addicted. But the significant factor is their environment and mental state, not that they decided to try something once.
In that context, certain things that may seem benign to try can easily progress into a stronger habit, then a dependency and pave the way to a real addiction.
By comparison 3 heavily medicated days in the hospital plus 1 week on heavy Opiods and 2 weeks light Opiods and that’s a vastly lesser craving. So, no addiction is not really just about long term exposure.
PS: Addiction is also not simply a habit, though habits make addiction harder to deal with.
They started smoking when working at the mines, on boats, or when they worked hospitality, or when they hang out with a certain friendship group. Saying yes that first time, allows it to begin and develop. Because you're often in that context due to work/life you will come up against that decision point again and again, quickly becoming addicted through repetition. But what keeps you there for life is the craving for nicotine.
So abstinence is a worthwhile goal still, and especially if the opportunity to smoke comes up at somewhere you'll be regularly.
When you leave that context, all you've got left is a costly habit that's a pain to quit.
But, not saying yes at that point might have cost you some chances to socialize and create some bonds with other smokers.
And you can still find places where being a smoker will help you socialize. Ex: in places where smoking is banned in bars, going out for a smoke is a pretty good way to start up a conversation with a perfect stranger.
Some coworkers at my old work quit smoking and also had to give up coffee. The connection was so strong they couldn't have one without the other. And the socializing out back in the smoking area was also a big part of it.
It also can cause friction at work. I've worked with smokers who are practically bouncing with energy. But they were crabby and combative when their nicotine levels were low. Then ten minutes later back to bouncy and cheery, it was exhausting to be around. I also estimated the 10 or 15 minute smoke breaks meant that my coworker made $5/hour more than me when were actually paid the same rate. He was adamant they were not breaks it was just a "quick smoke" but he was gone for 10 or 15 minutes every hour.
That doesn't sound right; the pattern I've generally seen for pack(s)-a-day people is they take similar smoke breaks as pack-a-week people -- something like once every few hours. But they'll smoke multiple cigarettes in that break. This would also make sense if you imagine nicotine decrease rate as constant, but number of cigarettes required to hit "satisfied" as steadily-increasing, though I don't know if that's the case.
Additionally, IME, smoking or not, I've noticed that most people follow the pattern of
1. Do a decent chunk of work for a few hours 2. Dick around for 20 minutes, especially if they just finished something notable
where that 20 minutes get spent on coffee breaks, smoke breaks, chatting around, etc.
Most of the "hard workers" spend more total hours, not more continuous hours, as far as I've seen. Of course, intentional abuse of the break is another matter, but that's independent of smoking
Nicotine can be just as harmless as caffeine. Personally I don't find nicotine very addictive at all, but even if it were super addictive it's all about how you consume it. [1] Nobody cares about how many people are addicted to caffeine, because the main consumption method of caffeine is pretty safe (coffee).
Caffeine is actually mixed with meth in ya ba (popular in Thailand) [2], but that doesn't mean that caffeine ruins lives. When you say that nicotine is deadly you're conflating the drug with something completely separate. It's sort of like saying that air is deadly, because it could kill you if you inject a lot of it into your veins.
[1] https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_ba
At this point I'm just happy I can breathe properly.
my friend is trying to quit and i hope he does , his health is sub-par.
I can smoke a cigarette or cigar socially, periodically, have done so for years, and never experience a craving. However, alcohol calls to me like Odysseus's sirens.
I have friends who are precisely the opposite: hopelessly jonesing for cigarettes, but have no problem grabbing a few beers a month with friends.
This is not merely anecdata - individual susceptibility has been documented in the literature, as well.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171010124112.h...
This sort of drug education is actively harmful for exactly the reason that you mention: For most people it does not work that way and when people encounter things that they thought are true and that turned out to be lies, trust in whatever else you told them is going to evaporate.
The kicker with lung cancer is that it doesn't really have any symptoms, and most people don't know they've got it until the cancer has metastasized and shows up somewhere else. That's more-or-less a death sentence.
Please do yourself a favor and get tested every ~6 months. (I know there are a lot of people that say false positives do more harm than good, and I still believe you're better to get tested if you smoked a pack a day for >10 years)
I am by no means a lung cancer expert, but currently there is contention about whether lung cancer screening in smokers is worthwhile, and I doubt at 6 monthly intervals. Some studies have shown benefits from screening for smokers, but I dont think any high quality evidence exist which shows a clear benefit of screening. There are options for screening, chest xray, CT chest. A CT chest is more sensitive than a chest xray but doing it every 6 months is going to cause much more harm than good.
My more general point is that these are recommendations which need to be evidence based, and doing more harm than good through false positives, excess radiation exposure, etc is a real risk. I dont think its helpful to make suggestions that are not based on evidence.
a) it was published yesterday, which means there is insufficient time to have a good critical appraisal.
b) looking at the confidence intervals, although there is significance in men, there is not one in men, and the confidence interval is quite wide
c) all cause mortality is similar in both groups despite screening
d) the follow up is only 10 years after first CT. the effect of radiation from these multiple CTs is unlikely to have reached maximum effect in damage to tissues/new neoplasms. This may also explain the increased non lung cancer mortality.
e) no mention is made of morbidity (although I might have missed it) which is a huge importance.
Overall, it’s unsurprising that in a group screened regularly for lung cancer that lung cancer incidence increases but mortality drops. The problem is the other effects of screening which this paper doesn’t seem to focus on. I don’t think this actually shows screening is particularly worth it especially given it’s caveats.
I don't stink like an ashtray and the smell of other smokers turns my stomach upside down and yet I am still under the spell of nicotine via ... e-cigs. Should I force myself to quit? Again, I haven't experienced any of the symptoms you describe above and smoked for a nearly the same period albeit just half a pack a day...
Humans are just exceptionally good at metabolizing both.
Nicotine alone is probably better than tobacco, but by how much, we are not sure.
Nicotine alone fucks with my hand joints -- whenever I go back to NTR my hand joints, my thumb joints hurt like hell; it takes about two- three months after I completely quit nicotine for the pain to subside.
After faffing two years with patches and liquids I took the Varenicline route... it was supposed to last 10 days and i stayed on it one full month but eventually I literally forgot to light up.
It works
> Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japan+lung+cancer+paradox!g
What is actually going on here?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18420238
I get Fallout vibes here.
Plus that VATS bonus
I tried to switch to vaping high nic (20mg liquid) - i think i may have scarring on my wind pipe (my throat still hurts from vaping that high nic, and breathing is still sometimes painful, which is pretty bad news)
Lungs do recover, but dont count on it. Quit today, and take it seriously.
Watch thank you for smoking, its great for stopping.
One of my friends from decades ago had asthma right through his teenage years, and was extremely thin and weedy. Couldn't exercise much without coughing fits and similar.
He took up swimming (!), and although it was slow going at first he eventually developed good lung capacity. And became a body builder. :)
Suspecting the same thing would work for anyone with not much (or damaged) lung capacity.
I smoked for 23 years and was diagnosed with COPD at about year 17. I still have serious lung issues but they do get better, slowly. Also I want to say that my body has adapted to function better in lower oxygen availability environment - as long as I don't burst cardio over a level I'm not accustomed to, I can keep it up for hours esp. endurance
It's been a long time since I've smoked. I've lost people close to me and will soon lose another due to lung cancer or emphysema. Smoking sucks, but I do miss those quite moments outside in the cool air with a cigarette.
It's a shame we have to walk past / through so many people smoking on the sidewalk though. It really is quite a disgusting habit.
If you work in a smoke-filled bar for 20 years or something, second-hand smoke is probably bad for you although the evidence for even that is much weaker than originally claimed.
Second-hand smoke outdoors in open air has very little in evidence to support claims that it's going to do much to you.
https://slate.com/technology/2017/02/secondhand-smoke-isnt-a...
1 and 2 combine for a moment of micro-anger
Whether or not second-hand smoke is carcinogenic or otherwise detrimental, the smell alone should force a public ban.
Or my solution: let businesses determine whether or not they want to allow smoking and for the most part the non-smokers will self-segregate to the non-smoking establishments just to avoid smelling like a cancerous ashtray.
Her cigarette budget was 80% of her pretty frugal food budget. If she hadn’t been smoking she wouldn’t have had to put so much time and effort into managing her food budget.
I wonder how much and how many ways our situation would have been better when I was a kid if my dad hadn’t smoked the entire time. Fucker used to hotbox us in the winter, too.
It's in the human nature, instead of fighting it it's better educate people to not abuse of anything
Playing devil's advocate, I'd say that the misery is not the smoking, but the excess smoking. Everything in excess begets misery.
COPD is actually cause of more deaths [1] than lung cancer and it does NOT get better if you stop smoking. It can only be slowed down, e.g. if you stop smoking.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
" The higher risk of lung cancer in ex-smokers compared with non-smokers is reflected in their high mutation burden and the signature of smoking-associated mutations in most of their lung cells (similar to the cellular profile of current smokers). Although ex-smokers have a high risk of developing lung cancer, their risk is reduced compared with that of current smokers, and this lowering depends on the length of time of smoking cessation1. Why this is the case has been hard to explain. However, perhaps the most surprising result of Yoshida and colleagues’ work might offer a clue: in 5 out of 6 ex-smokers, 20–50% of the cells had a low mutation burden that was similar to the profile of non-smokers of the same age range. "
The main cause of lung cancer is precisely that mutation burden that the paper studies. From what I read, most lung cancers stem from mutations of bronchial epithelial cells instead of mutations in the alveoles or other parts of the lung.
The mutation burden is both the cause of lung cancer and can advance the disease by further mutations leading to accelerated growth/metasthazing behaviour/etc.
Don't smoke kids.
I only smoked for about a year before deciding to quit. Unfortunately, I took me 12 years to finish quitting.
During that period of my physical prime (ages 18 to 26), I couldn't climb a flight of stairs or ride a bike without getting completely winded. Any sort of physical exertion would result in gasping, coughing up phlegm, and seeing stars. A pick-up game of basketball or street hockey was out of the question.
I finally kicked it at age 30, 14 years after I had started. Although it took a while, by age 35 I could physically do things my 20-year-old self could only dream of. Like riding a bike up a hill, or exerting oneself at the gym.
I'm now in my mid-40s, and while the rest of body is now deteriorating at an alarming rate, my lungs are quite literally the only part of my body I never think about. I'm physically stronger and healthier in my mid-40s than I was at age 20.
So if you smoke, quit. Your lungs will recover.
I started running when I was probably smoking 10 a day and was in the best shape of my life up to that point. If you don’t do any exercise and you smoke you’re likely to be in pretty awful shape. But you can easily smoke and be in much better shape than people who don’t exercise. The bar is very low.
How did society get on just fine when almost everybody smoked? Is this reaction an outlier?
Most of them didn't live till 80 unless they had very good eating habits or some manual hobbies.
My grandparents are 92 and 93. All of their colleagues from work, all of their friends, siblings are gone. They had a healthy workout of managing garden, raising kids, collecting mushrooms in the forest, occasional walk or hike in mountains. Steady life. Not much drinking, no smoking (grandpa quit when he was still young, my father forced him). I believe daily chores and manual work helps to keep the body well. Its not about intensity but regularity.
You see all the old folks who live long, but for every one of them there are many more who died because of bad luck (decisions, genes) and bad habits.
[0] https://twistedsifter.com/2011/12/picture-of-the-day-vintage...
You wouldn't believe it watching him skate, he was a speedster. Technique overcoming the respiratory system, I suppose.
He admits smoking in intermissions between periods in this interview [0]
[0] http://oilersnation.com/2013/10/16/guy-lafleur-shares-some-s...
I told him he wasn't going to be invincible for ever, though. But like me he probably won't listen until he gets some kind of diagnosis or coughs up blood or something.
This has been known for years if not decades(even more to actual smokers).It's not magic, it's the human body.
It's the reason why people still smoke even though they know it's bad (usually people with very high physical activity: drivers, etc).People with less physical activity can drop smoking faster because they're tenfold more affected by it.
Smoking is bad,especially if one does very little physical activity.There's a very deep psychological explanation for people's desire to smoke (besides entourage,desire to 'fit in',etc), which is that people literally forget to breathe in our societies.This is due to a long list of reasons: sedentary lives, stress, imposed 'time' schedules that force us to deny the needs of our bodies, less desire to breathe due to low quality of oxygen,etc.
BBC using the word magically here is very hypocritical, knowing that they'd jump to disprove any narratives that contradict their own agendas at any given time.BBC knows this is not magic, but then again mass-media in US and other places is thankfully dying, sparing our lives from the miserable, garbage tier articles of this kind.
On a related note, I think the demonstration that lung cells and lung cancers bear the stigmata of tobacco related mutagenesis has some significance to the legal liability of Big Tobacco. With this data one can show that a particular cancer in a particular person began from a single cell which was mutated by tobacco exposure. This is one level up from saying tobacco merely increases the risk of cancer on average, which is always open to the counter-argument that some other factor could have caused the particular cancer in the particular person. Whole genome sequencing of tumour and germline DNA can be had for about $5k these days plus analysis costs, so a class action suit or even individual suits are very feasible. There will be no shortage of oncologists and genomics people happy to help out with this.
I wish there was some way to make such a thing illegal, other children shouldn't have to grow up how I did.
I like to say i woke up and the urge was gone, but that isn't the full truth. The days before I quit I had extreme anxiousness and couldn't sleep, thinking about how much I love life and what plans I have and how I want to have children - and how stupid it is to inhale smoke that kills you and doesn't even taste that good in exchange. I didn't want to die. Next day, halfway through the second one, I noticed they really don't taste good and decided to quit.
I've been thinking of making a tiny bowl-vaporizer to inhale THC in small doses just to cleanse my lungs.