patrick.net

I honestly wonder whether Jeanne Calment's daily cigarette contributed to her living the longest time of any human ever.

Maybe this effect is somehow related to the fact that endometrial cancer is lower in women who smoke:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18501231/

Conclusion: Cigarette smoking was found to be significantly associated with a reduced risk of endometrial cancer, especially among postmenopausal women.

It's probably the nicotine. Everything in moderation.

mell says

It's probably the nicotine. Everything in moderation.

Addicts don't moderate. An isolated data farming shouldn't be taken out of context with all the other associated risks. Also, there is always the profitable industries financing the studies and having their fingers on the scales for sales, which seems to be the phenom rule rather than exception in the marketing departments.

Once hooked, always a craving customer and a profit center. I have two in laws with lung cancer, one dead in mid fifties, and the other can't quit with cancer in both lungs and under chemotherapy. I have known enough smokers to know that they are genuine addicts, and not happy campers generally around the habit. Nicotine also induces negative personality changes (reactivity and lack of emotional control) and a much lowered pain threshold.

Remember RFK saying that the scientists who worked in the tobacco industry to make cigarettes as addictive as possible were drafted over into the food industries to do the same with toxic food products? Those would also have been the Bernays style social scientists who would construct the Madison Av stuff to make smoking seem stylish and sophisticated.

Cigs are bad. Nothing to argue as a former heavy smoker. HEAVY. I feel fine after 7-8 years 100% clean but it's awful for you. Anything you inhale into your lungs is causing problems. If you're not a smoker or haven't smoked you have no clue. You have no clue in a big way. You'd throw up and shit yourself going up one flight of stairs after 1-2 packs.

I've seen smokers cough and shit themselves. It's not a game.

Well, just like statins are 'promoted' on the basis of men's fear of heart attacks, they can promote nicotine addiction under the premise that men fear prostate cancer.

Fear marketing is also standard for addictive substances, as are assertions that they are good for your health and 'medicinal' rather than destructive. It's been going on forever, and the song remains the same. Somebody's living on gorgeous estates with groomed lawns on the heads of the addicted.

Pick a group of fear totems established in the group mind, and you can bet there is an addictive substance that uses those fears as a marketing tool, as well as the assurances of bliss and release on using the product.

Patrick says

Maybe this effect is somehow related to the fact that endometrial cancer is lower in women who smoke:

It’s a conundrum. Likewise, the beneficial effects of obesity.

Ceffer says

Addicts don't moderate.

That's true for every addiction. There are plenty of people who smoke casually or rarely.

Al_Sharpton_for_President says

Patrick says

Maybe this effect is somehow related to the fact that endometrial cancer is lower in women who smoke:

It’s a conundrum. Likewise, the beneficial effects of obesity.

Probably a consequence of reduced testosterone, not worth it overall (being obese) of course.

mell says

That's true for every addiction. There are plenty of people who smoke casually or rarely.

Those aren't the people they are interested in, and the 'average' smoker of half a pack to a pack a day is much more common than the occasional 'abstemious' user. My aunt would smoke a cigarette or two a day, but usually while evening drinking, and no more. She lived to 92, but I doubt the 'habit' helped her even at that level.

Also, those who start smoking thinking they will be an 'abstemious, classy' user more often find themselves smoking a lot more as a compulsive addiction. The 'abstemious, classy' user is a mythology that they like to promote to get people started, as in media where smoking is presented as a disposable, occasional pleasure rather than a compulsive addiction.

Lady around the corner in Santa Cruz is a sweet old hippie with rancid recessed teeth and gums (also from smoking), but she is end stage and can't go for more than 15 minutes without stopping for a smoke, and can't even walk around the hood without stopping for a ciggie.

Anyway, it's pointless to talk to addicts in denial, who will buy into the mythologies as religion in order not to face the destructiveness. That's why it's called addiction. Easily ignited, easily exploited, easily veiled by the addicts themselves who promote the addictions, too, because misery loves company.

https://www.healthline.com/health/smoking/nicotine-and-gout

Despite all the negatives, research occasionally finds a positive feature of smoking, like reduced gout risk. Gout is a painful type of arthritis that develops when monosodium urate crystals accumulate in your joints, but smokers appear to have a lower risk for this condition.