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What We AREN'T Being Told About Smoking

Kondoru

Beloved of Ra
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
10,639
We are told that the Japanese are a healthy and long lived race.

Yet they are great smokers; about 60% of adults smoke.

(and they love their booze)

So what does this mean?
 
It means there are other factors other than simply smoking or non smoking involved in life expectancy, although there is little doubt that it is a major cause of disease.

Hardly grounds for a "conspiracy".
 
If it wasn't for the smoking they'd live to 200...
 
have a society thats usually physically fit
eat raw veg
have diffrent genome

etc

we arnt all the same
 
I gave up smoking last July. Best thing I ever did. To imply there is a conspiracy to tell us that smoking is unhealthy when in actual fact it doesn't affect our health is ridiculous. What would the motive be for THEM to misinform us?

Inhaling noxious fumes is bad for your health, fact.

Just because some smokers live until they are 90 doesn't mean their health is not affected by smoking. They might live a long life but the quality of that life is affected. All that tells me is that the human body can be extremely hardy, rather than the fact that smoking is harmless and we are being spun a lie by THEM.
 
I don't have the figures to hand but are the Russians not heavy smokers with a life expectancy considerably shorter than the British? It's not really indicative of too much?
 
This isn't even a conspiracy, it's a half-arsed rumour. :lol:

Who says all these things -


We are told that the Japanese are a healthy and long lived race.

Yet they are great smokers; about 60% of adults smoke.

(and they love their booze)

and why should we believe them? And how have 'healthy' and 'long lived' been measured? And how do we know how many smoke or drink? And how do these figures compare to those of other countries? Can they in fact be compared?



*goes back to SPSS*
 
* looks over esc's shoulder at SPSS *

Ooh, that's a fine bit a kurtosis!
 
Yup, I've got ointment for that. :lol:
 
You quantitative nerds! :lol:

Lordy, how I hate SPSS. :(
 
My wife used to teach undergraduate sociologists how to use it. The blue cloud is probably still floating around somewhere.
 
Escargot, your avatar is disturbing. What is that pulsating pink thing?



Actually, I'm not sure I want to know.
 
Well heres some news about smoking. Full text at link.

Men who never smoke live longer, better lives than heavy smokers
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=143132483

Health-related quality of life appears to deteriorate as the number of cigarettes smoked per day increases, even in individuals who subsequently quit smoking, according to a report in the October 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.


Smoking has been shown to shorten men's lives between seven and 10 years, according to background information in the article. It also has been linked to factors that may reduce quality of life, including poor nutrition and lower socioeconomic status.

Arto Y. Strandberg, M.D., of the University of Helsinki, and colleagues followed 1,658 white men born between 1919 and 1934 who were healthy at their first assessment, conducted in 1974. Participants were mailed follow-up questionnaires in 2000 that assessed their current smoking status, health and quality of life. Deaths were tracked through Finnish national registers.

During the 26-year follow-up period, 372 (22.4 percent) of the men died. Those who had never smoked lived an average of 10 years longer than heavy smokers (more than 20 cigarettes per day). Non-smokers also had the best scores on all health-related quality of life measures, especially those associated with physical functioning. Physical health deteriorated at an increasing rate as the number of cigarettes smoked per day increased, with heavy smokers experiencing a decline equivalent to 10 years of aging.
 
We are told that the Japanese are a healthy and long lived race.

Yet they are great smokers; about 60% of adults smoke.

(and they love their booze)

So what does this mean?

It's not just the Japanese - Southern Europeans also tend to smoke (and drink - far more than the Japanese) heavily, yet enjoy long and healthy lives.

I'm guessing it is a combination of factors and that things such as healthier diets and less stress are as important as fags and booze (ot the lack of them).

I think I did read something once which suggested that the rise in lung cancer etc was linked with the popularisation of commercially produced cigarettes, which are full of lots of nasties aside from tobacco, and that when people smoked pipes or rolled their own there were not the same levels of health problems.
 
Indeed, roll-ups are the health-food option in cigarettes ;)

On the subject of 'what we are not being told' about smoking, I read somewhere that the best, longest running, most scientific of passive smoking studies was run by the WHO, but as its results basically showed that the risks were negligable they don't really talk about it as this is contrary to their pre-existing policy. However I am fairly sure this factoid was delivered to me by FOREST or similar pro-smoking lobby.

Who to believe, eh? :smokin:
 
_Lizard23_ said:
Indeed, roll-ups are the health-food option in cigarettes ;)

...
There's a whole little ritual involved in rolling your own cigarettes, almost as satisfying as smoking the things. A sort of temporarily deferred gratification.

It probably mostly means that people who smoke ready-mades, smoke two, or three, times as many fags, for every roll-up. And, because there's usually a set amount of, well ventilated, tinder-dry, tobacco in every ready-made, inhale a lot more cigarette smoke, each time. Especially, if the diy smoker is using less tobacco, in each roll-up.
 
You could buy filter-tips for roll-ups but I seldom met anyone who used them. My memory of the few roll-ups I tried as a silly student is that they were acrid, hot-burning things - nearly as lung-scorching as untipped Caporal or Gitanes! Then there was that special crumbly tobacco that needed to be roasted over a flame - I wonder what became of that?

It all makes me nearly nostalgic for those exotic smokes one encountered as a young man: oval untipped Regie Turque, the black and gold Russian Sobranie or the pastel-coloured Cocktail ones, if you were very camp. Then these were those amazing Russian things, the size of a firework, which consisted mainly of cardboard tubing . . .

You could try one of those little holders that eliminated the tarry stuff but they also impeded the flow of the smoke so that few persevered long enough to have to clean one after a few smokes. That was an education! I'm glad I gave up very early but I know people whose student habit took them decades to shake off. :?
 
Not sure "about" 60% of adults smoke.

Perhaps 60% of adult males. Certainly far fewer females.
 
Some of the Russians in Goa use those weird long-cardboard-filter cigarettes to skin up - they just sort of blow the tobacco out (p-tui!) and pull the filter most of the way out and fill the paper tube back up again with their mix of choice; odd to see - always makes me think 'Tampax'!

You can still get Sobranie of both kinds in the few remaining specialist tobacconists here - wonderful places to me, intriguing and oldie-worldie.

Most of the roll-up smokers I know these days use filters - myself included, mainly to avoid 'rollie-lip' whch is probably an early form of cancer in itself :?
 
And what about those clove cigarrettes? I used to love them, but I can't find them here in Mexico. I wonder how bad they are, since they really are very good :D
 
James Whitehead has given me a proustian moment!

Reading your beautiful prose transported me back over thirty years, to the Essex tobacconist, where I could purchase Balkan Sobranie, Black Russian and other exotic smokin smoking comestibles. Regarding the thread topic, when I worked for a Japanese company (the largest telco in the world) everyone smoked, but Japanese people drink very little. Two pints of stella would have them paralytic and near dead the next day. As an ethnic Irishman I have to grudgeingly admit it's actually the healthy way to regard booze.

What's probably more important is the Japanese mindset.
 
James Whitehead has given me a proustian moment!

Reading your beautiful prose transported me back over thirty years, to the Essex tobacconist, where I could purchase Balkan Sobranie, Black Russian and other exotic smokin smoking comestibles. Regarding the thread topic, when I worked for a Japanese company (the largest telco in the world) everyone smoked, but Japanese people drink very little. Two pints of stella would have them paralytic and near dead the next day. As an ethnic Irishman I have to grudgeingly admit it's actually the healthy way to regard booze.

What's probably more important is the Japanese mindset.
 
Re: James Whitehead has given me a proustian moment!

balding13 said:
Reading your beautiful prose transported me back over thirty years, to the Essex tobacconist, where I could purchase Balkan Sobranie, Black Russian and other exotic smokin smoking comestibles. Regarding the thread topic, when I worked for a Japanese company (the largest telco in the world) everyone smoked, but Japanese people drink very little. Two pints of stella would have them paralytic and near dead the next day. As an ethnic Irishman I have to grudgeingly admit it's actually the healthy way to regard booze.

What's probably more important is the Japanese mindset.

Japanese do not have the enzyme to breakdown ethanol like us westerners and so they suffer the effects quicker and for longer - so i understand.
 
Several Koreans I know also go quite red in the face/neck (and even get heat-rash type of outbreaks on their chest) when they drink alcohol (particularly spirits). That's not to say accompanying tolerance is always low; many drink a lot.
 
Re: James Whitehead has given me a proustian moment!

millomite said:
balding13 said:
Reading your beautiful prose transported me back over thirty years, to the Essex tobacconist, where I could purchase Balkan Sobranie, Black Russian and other exotic smokin smoking comestibles. Regarding the thread topic, when I worked for a Japanese company (the largest telco in the world) everyone smoked, but Japanese people drink very little. Two pints of stella would have them paralytic and near dead the next day. As an ethnic Irishman I have to grudgeingly admit it's actually the healthy way to regard booze.

What's probably more important is the Japanese mindset.

Japanese do not have the enzyme to breakdown ethanol like us westerners and so they suffer the effects quicker and for longer - so i understand.

IIRC, it's something to do with the fact that in the "West", we used alcohol to purify water (as ale etc.), but in the "East" the convention was to boil the water up and then drink it (tea).

Westerners evolved the gene to help break down the poisonous alcohol over time.
 
I thought it was the other way round, that the genetic difference is the reason brewing didn't take off so much as a water purification method in the East.
 
Brrr, just did a quick Google on them. :(

Here's a rather sarcastic comment from Yahoo answers:

The beauty of tobacco is that it allows you to choose your cancer. Chew and snuff causes cancer of the lip and toungue. Pipes and cigars cause cancer of the larynx. Cigarettes cause cancer of the lung. Soooo.... if you want a cancer of the lip or tongue, leave the Skoal Bandit in between your teeth and cheek for about five years- that should be enough...


Wasn't there a Skoal Bandit-type factory planned some years ago, in Scotland? I seem to remember that after some campaigning by health awareness groups, involving Esther Rantzen, the company were refused permission for it.
 
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