This Book Could Save Your Life by Graham Lawton

Author:Graham Lawton [Graham Lawton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2019-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

THE TRUTH ABOUT SMOKING

Smoking is one of the worst things you can do for your health. For a habitual smoker, each cigarette shaves about fifteen minutes off their lifespan. But what about social smokers, who might have an odd puff outside the pub, or passive smokers who are exposed to other people’s second-hand smoke?

According to the British Heart Foundation, there are 1.1 million occasional smokers in the UK. That includes people who smoke but not every day, or smoke an average of less than one cigarette a day. Can the health effects of such a habit really be that bad?

Some of the risks of occasional smoking do pale in comparison to those from a twenty-a-day habit. The risk of lung cancer, for example, increases linearly the more you smoke.

But there is no such thing as no risk. Every cigarette you smoke – or every lungful of second-hand smoke you breathe in – increases your chance of getting lung cancer and other lung diseases. Fine particulate matter in the smoke causes damage to the lining of the lungs, the cumulative effects of which can be a serious breathing disorder.

And social smokers who think the harms can be compensated for by exercise, diet or antioxidant supplements are kidding themselves. There is no way to protect your lungs from this damage or fully reverse it once it is done. Even stopping smoking is not going to restore your lungs to a pristine state.

The biggest immediate risk for social smokers is cardiovascular disease and heart attack. Unlike the risk of cancer or respiratory disease, which increase linearly with every cigarette smoked, the risk of heart disease is non-linear, with the highest jump coming after the first cigarette and increasing more slowly thereafter.

If your relative risk at zero smoke exposure is 1.0, one cigarette increases it to 1.4. Going from one to five cigarettes only raises it to 1.5, and it rises by another 0.1 for every five cigarettes thereafter. In other words, to double your heart attack risk you need to smoke thirty a day. Passive smoking raises it to 1.3.

But be aware that this is relative risk; in other words, the increase in risk of having a heart attack over your baseline risk, which varies from person to person. So if you have a very low risk of a heart attack because of being fit and having a normal BMI, low blood pressure and cholesterol, a crafty fag won’t raise it very much. But is it worth it?

Quitting smoking altogether will undo some of the risk damage. Within a year your relative risk of smoking-related heart disease will be halved.22 Quitting could also claw back some years lost to your lifespan. Among people who die of cardiovascular disease, smokers do so on average five and a half years earlier than non-smokers. For ex-smokers, the gap goes down to two and a half years – even if they quit as late as their sixties.

You may have heard of the ‘smoker’s paradox’, whereby smokers admitted to hospital after a heart attack have a better chance of survival than lifetime non-smokers.

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