Reading this part was amusing to me, for some people it might make their heads explode (figuratively): "With this in mind, smoking should be commenced at as young an age as is reasonably possible. Children who have not yet developed a pincer grasp might require modified cigarette holders, safety lighters or both."
My own experience is mixed. In high school, I was a cross-country runner (3 mile footrace). I was almost always just one or two positions behind the top five runners on my team (only top five score points in a meet). Many years later, I started to think that maybe my daily exposure (one or two hours) to second-hand cigarette smoke from one of my parents had something to do with me not being faster. This study seems to indicate that might not be true at all. And our fastest runner on the team (competitive at the state level) was known to be an occasional cigarette smoker. Go figure.
More importantly, it shows the noise in correlations. Life is stochastic and multivariate, not binary. I played a competitive aerobic sport and the French national team performed well, but would smoke. There are smokers that live 100+ years. That doesn't mean smoking is safe or good.
Y'all did read the important bit in the Abstract, right?
> if research results are selectively chosen, a review has the potential to create a convincing argument for a faulty hypothesis. Improper correlation or extrapolation of data can result in dangerously flawed conclusions.
I admire the efforts of this research, and I’ll also say that while I do not endorse smoking cigarettes and I regret the amount of cigarettes I do smoke, there has been a strong correlation between the increase in my cigarette consumption over the last two years (from ~1/2 pack a day to 1-2 packs per day) and my running performance (from not any ever to ~1/2 mile on several occasions).
All of those runs I have embarked on have been with my dog, who thinks it’s the coolest thing ever.
How..do u smoke over a pack a day? That's over a one an hour...So I assuming you're chainsmoking. Doesn't it impact your productivity because u have to take so make breaks?
Amazingly I take few breaks (not that I’m especially productive regardless of breaks). I just have a few stretches of long sitting, and yep chain smoking. Highly do not recommend! But nasty weather aside, I do think if I ever manage to quit I’ll keep the sitting outside habit. That’s quite nice.
Slight tangent: I do appreciate that it’s a relatively reliable assumption now that smokers go outside. My parents still don’t even do that. Which… yeah, it’s a lot easier to smoke 1+ packs/day if you can just keep right on doing whatever you’re doing.
> With this in mind, smoking should be commenced at as young an age as is reasonably possible. Children who have not yet developed a pincer grasp might require modified cigarette holders, safety lighters or both. These points are moot at this time, because such initiatives are not possible in many countries because of existing legislation putting age restrictions on the purchase of cigarettes.
Back in the mid-90s I was referred to a specialist because my excessive snoring was giving me sleep apnoea. The consultant advised that I needed throat reconstruction surgery to cure the problem. He asked me if I smoked. Expecting yet another telling-off from the medical profession, I admitted that I did. "Don't give up," he told me. "Smoking helps dry out the throat and will make the procedure easier to perform."
To date, he is the only doctor who's told me to carry on smoking.
I didn't have the surgery - I wasn't willing to risk pain and anaesthesia just to please other people. There's a wide range of treatments for sleep apnoea nowadays (for instance: stop smoking, loose a bit of weight and learn to sleep with head tilted back) so I reckon I made the right decision.
Next article will be titled “coccaine: an underused tool in high-performance boardroom negotiation”
Are the side effects and addictive potential not bad enough to cancel out the benefits here? By saying it’s under used, you are saying more people should smoke once in a while. Everyone I know who ever smoked once in a while became daily smokers eventually and couldn’t quit for years (many still smoke)
The abstract clearly states that the paper is meant to highlight that selectively using and interpreting data can lead you to make bad hypotheses and conclusions.
This is not an article that is seriously advocating for cigarrette use.
EDIT: seriously, it's against the guidelines to ask "did you even read the article" but for real man, it's like the third sentence in the abstract.
Fair, but on the other hand, the author clearly wrote the most deliberately provocative, clickbaity, and misleading title they could have instead of an accurate, descriptive one. Satire in the titles of scientific articles is a weird choice
25 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 61.2 ms ] threadXD
Reading this part was amusing to me, for some people it might make their heads explode (figuratively): "With this in mind, smoking should be commenced at as young an age as is reasonably possible. Children who have not yet developed a pincer grasp might require modified cigarette holders, safety lighters or both."
My own experience is mixed. In high school, I was a cross-country runner (3 mile footrace). I was almost always just one or two positions behind the top five runners on my team (only top five score points in a meet). Many years later, I started to think that maybe my daily exposure (one or two hours) to second-hand cigarette smoke from one of my parents had something to do with me not being faster. This study seems to indicate that might not be true at all. And our fastest runner on the team (competitive at the state level) was known to be an occasional cigarette smoker. Go figure.
> if research results are selectively chosen, a review has the potential to create a convincing argument for a faulty hypothesis. Improper correlation or extrapolation of data can result in dangerously flawed conclusions.
That said, I do know some rather serious mountaineers that will have a few cigarettes on extreme climbs and they swear it helps ease the strain.
All of those runs I have embarked on have been with my dog, who thinks it’s the coolest thing ever.
Slight tangent: I do appreciate that it’s a relatively reliable assumption now that smokers go outside. My parents still don’t even do that. Which… yeah, it’s a lot easier to smoke 1+ packs/day if you can just keep right on doing whatever you’re doing.
Lol, what a shame
To date, he is the only doctor who's told me to carry on smoking.
Are the side effects and addictive potential not bad enough to cancel out the benefits here? By saying it’s under used, you are saying more people should smoke once in a while. Everyone I know who ever smoked once in a while became daily smokers eventually and couldn’t quit for years (many still smoke)
This is not an article that is seriously advocating for cigarrette use.
EDIT: seriously, it's against the guidelines to ask "did you even read the article" but for real man, it's like the third sentence in the abstract.
I was shocked to read that nicotine isn't associated with cancer deaths in cigarette smoking, I don't recall if there is a heart disease link.
It's all the other crap in cigarettes.
I guess it is hard to run studies because nicotine is as addictive as heroin.