The truth behind the “healthy smoker” myth (2024)

FAQs

The truth behind the “healthy smoker” myth? ›

When it comes to cancer prevention, the damaging effects of smoking can't be reversed by exercise or a healthy diet. There's no such thing as a healthy smoker - especially when it comes to cancer prevention.

To the modern-day reader, the pitching of cigarettes as healthy (even to youth and pregnant moms) and the use of doctors' endorsem*nts may appear horrifying. Yet before 1950, there wasn't good evidence showing that cigarette smoking was bad for you.

Interestingly, when compared with subjects who never smoked, the point that asymptomatic smokers with normal physical exam are healthy is much less obvious. Actually, healthy smokers are not healthy. Many studies have detected pathological changes in healthy smokers.

There is no safe smoking option – tobacco is always harmful. Light, low-tar and filtered cigarettes aren't any safer – people usually smoke them more deeply or smoke more of them. The only way to reduce harm is to quit smoking.

Smoking causes about 20% of all cancers and about 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States. About 80% of lung cancers, as well as about 80% of all lung cancer deaths, are due to smoking. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in people in the United States.

And by the 1930s, tobacco companies had an army of doctors ready to debunk you as a quack for even suggesting something as benign as a cigarette could give you cancer. In fact, in the 1940s, you were more likely to see an ad like this, using doctors to promote smoking.

The answer was to use medical research and physicians to show the public that cigarettes were not harmful. Although the doctors in these advertisem*nts were always actors and not real physicians, the image of the physician permeated cigarette ads for the next two and a half decades.

Long-time smokers will take longer for their lungs to improve. Some damage from smoking is permanent. Unfortunately, your alveoli cannot restore themselves, but stopping smoking will halt the progression of COPD and improve your ability to breathe.

That's because a very few people are physiologically less susceptible to the arterial aging and carcinogenic effects of cigarette smoke than the rest of us. These people have higher levels of specific enzymes that activate the carcinogens contained in smoke.

By drinking 64 ounces of water per day (eight 8-ounce cups), you're keeping any mucus in your lungs thin, which makes it easier to get rid of mucus when you cough. Drinking warm beverages, like tea, broth, or even just hot water, may cause thinning of mucus, making it easier to clear from your airways.

Is any smoking OK? ›

Bottom line: There is no safe amount of smoking. Build your personalized quit plan to start quitting now. Quitting is the best choice you can make for your health.

1: Vaping is less harmful than smoking, but it's still not safe. E-cigarettes heat nicotine (extracted from tobacco), flavorings and other chemicals to create an aerosol that you inhale. Regular tobacco cigarettes contain 7,000 chemicals, many of which are toxic.

What is considered a heavy smoker? A heavy smoker is someone who smokes more than 20 cigarettes (about one pack) per day, and usually smokes every day. Heavy smokers are often very dependent on tobacco, which makes quitting more complex and challenging.

When cigar smokers don't inhale or smoke few cigars per day, the risks are only slightly above those of never smokers. Risks of lung cancer increase with increasing inhalation and with increasing number of cigars smoked per day, but the effect of inhalation is more powerful than that for number of cigars per day.

Among male smokers, the risk for heart disease with one cigarette a day remained at 46% compared to non-smokers. The risk of stroke, 41%. Women who smoked one cigarette a day had a 31% risk for heart disease, and 34% for stroke.

Tar can cause lung cancer, emphysema, and bronchial diseases, while carbon monoxide can cause heart problems. Other serious health problems linked to smoking include digestive cancers, gastric ulcers, and cancers of the throat, tongue, lip, esophagus, and pancreas.

Scientific knowledge of the harmful effects of active tobacco smoking has accumulated during the past 60 years since early descriptions of the increasing prevalence of lung cancer. The first epidemiological studies showing an association between smoking and lung cancer were published in 1950.

Smokers are more likely than nonsmokers to develop heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Estimates show smoking increases the risk: For coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times. For stroke by 2 to 4 times.

Robicsek posits that smoking in the Americas probably originated in incense-burning ceremonies, and was later adopted for pleasure or as a social tool. The Maya employed it in classical times (at least from the 10th century) and the Aztecs included it in their mythology.