To wonder if people were actually healthier when everyone smoked

I don't want to be an Ozempic-knocker but it's becoming clearer that for a lot of users it's a treatment for life, at least in maintenance doses. Wonder what impact that will have longterm, to the pancreas etc, let alone the cost to the health service outstripping the cost of obesity related health, as pp said.

Of my contempories most of the smokers, however slim, are dead. Some of the fatties are doing fine so far ( early 70s). The people who are unusually fit for their age have never smoked, drunk alcohol only on special occasions and kept active. Heavy drinkers and smokers mostly dead and if not chronically ill. Smoking definitely more lethal than carrying a bit of extra weight.

Strangely I know some extremely obese people who smoke, it amazes me. I know I personally eould lose weight if I smoked but I'll take the heart attack over cancer.

People will stay on for potentially for life and/or smaller, less frequent, maintenance dose.

I recognise your username. Still peddling the same old tropes about later life, I see.

I do love the OP's username...

And what happens when you have to stop taking them?

One thing they always seem to forget when they keep bumping the pension age up is, people might be living longer but many aren't exactly fit to be working.

Hahaha 😆
I remember a diet book in WH Smith - Get Back into your Jeans Diet.

Don’t disagree but also know the access/beds/plans forecast re: hospitals/NHS re: growing obesity now altered because of projected GLP use.

This and other medical advances, imho, just encourage irresponsible lifestyles...

I mean why bother with exercise, diet.. if all you have to do is swallow another 'pill for your ill?

Diet drugs, from what i've read, pretty much stop working when the user stops taking them, then there is the budget.... if all patients eligible, got them, the cost would be £10billion, obesity costs the NHS 6/7 billion.

Yes, I can easily squeeze into my M & S jeans because they have a bit of stretch. Back in the 1970s, I can remember laying on my bed trying to pull up the zip of my jeans using a coat hanger. Those jeans were very unforgiving!

GLPs game changing, it’s expected to go along way to cure obesity within the decade.

TBF Sat in your own piss, unable to recognise your own kids is not fun either...

So what if we all live, on average an extra 5 or 6 years longer if those years are spent in a care home or locked away from society, with the only social interaction when the carer comes for 45mins....

The smokers i knew who died, went within a year of diagnosis, the ones who who got dementia etc went on for years...

I'm not at all defending or agreeing with the OP, its just that this desire to live as long as possible is fucking stupid....

The average person today will develop health issues like diabetes, hi blood pressure, obesity in their 50s, early 60s but because of advances in medical care will quite literally stagger on for 30+ years.

With the reduction in smoking, we had a great chance to improve both longevity and quality of life but what did we do with it???

I'd agree vanity sizing and lyca clothing has a sin to answer for. And I mean lyca in stuff that used to be unforgiving like jeans and dressy trousers.

It doesn’t, though it’s a similar subject, hence I added ‘also’ into the sentence to imply as such.

Exactly this. OP, to be blunt, I suspect you haven’t visited hospital wards and seen people in the final stages of smoking-related illnesses. I doubt any of them could tell you of any upsides to smoking or that it was worth it. They’ve spent most of their lives battling nicotine addiction and in many cases it’s claimed their lives prematurely. But hey, at least they’re not fatties, eh?

Yes, we did, but there were very few of them and they were not that much overweight. The three women I can think of in the village where I grew up were probably no more than a size 18 by today's sizing. Most women were a size 10, 12 and 14.

And clothes sizes are very different now, so it's very misleading. About 17 years ago when harem pants first came back into fashion, I gave my DD (then aged about 16) a pair of size 12 designer harem pants that I wore at the age of 21. She was a size 8 and they were too small for her.

I don't think there is any one single answer to obesity. It's a combination of so many things. Lifestyle, UPFs etc. One of the things that springs to mind is pharmaceuticals. Many prescribed drugs these days have a potential side-effect of weight gain.

A friend of mine was prescribed Mounjaro as she is diabetic. Shortly afterwards she ended up with a blocked bile duct and had to have a cholecystectomy. It was supposed to be urgent, but she had to wait eight or nine months. Then she had to have two or three weeks off work on SSP, so lost a huge amount of her income. And, to be honest, she doesn't look like she has lost any weight! If she has it's minimal. I think all this was caused by Mounjaro, as gallstones etc are one of the listed side-effects.

My dad suffered this. He was a passive smoker for years at his workplace. My mum would say the air was foggy with smoke there. 10 hour days for nearly 20 years. He died of lung cancer when he was 56, my brother and I were 13 and 16. I think a lot of people forget about passive smoking.

https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Smoking is much more likely to lead to a protracted and painful death preceded by years of poor quality of life.

The other half of smokers die of something else. And All non-smokers die of something else. Therefore not smoking is 75% more likely to kill you than smoking.

Yeah my Dad had a ball smoking and was a healthy weight. Dead at 58 from lung cancer but at least he wasn't fat eh?

You can’t compare being thin to being healthy. That’s like when my MIL saying she was fitter than an Olympic athlete because she was slimmer, this was a woman who complained if she had to walk to a different room.

FILs family were all heavy smokers. Lots of horrible deaths, years on oxygen, losing limbs, dropping dead of massive stokes, cancer. My FIL coughed every morning for over an hour for decades, hideous.