To wonder if people were actually healthier when everyone smoked

[Fragmentedbrain]

(I have never smoked and used to hate going to bars etc that stank of smoke so this is a very against my own interests question but)

Smoking makes people thinner (it just does)

Cigarettes can be good for people with anxiety

Smoking is a social activity and social connection is good for health

Should we try and get a tiny bit more going?

(Not me I still don't want my hair to smell)

You're probably correct as a large % of smokers would be dead and not be worrying about their weight or anxiety. 🙄

Do you have anxiety about dementia OP?
Having watched my octogenarian mother and uncle succumb to this vile condition, and my other uncle die of emphysema (and booze) in his mid 70s, I can see why many people might think that way. But unfortunately, cancer is also a long-drawn out death.

Back in medieval times almost nobody got cancer or heart disease, and there were no ultra-processed foods. So clearly everyone must have been much healthier then.

(Joking aside, has anyone else noticed that OP's argument is precisely the one used by anti-vaxxers, as in "Yes but who ever actually gets polio?")

What? Maybe you are being tongue in cheek but they certainly did get cancer. I believe it was called 'wolf' on old records.

I was born in the late 1950s and grew up in a small village where we all pretty much knew each other. There was probably no more than three women in the village who could be considered obese and they were only about a size 18 in today's sizes.

I was indeed being tongue in cheek. But I would still stand by "hardly anyone" getting cancer back then, if we allow "hardly anyone" to mean 2 or 3%, because cancer is a disease of ageing. Life back then really was nasty, brutish, and short. People are only available to die of cancer when they haven't already died of septic wounds, or the kinds of infectious diseases that are readily preventable with basic hygiene and vaccines.

I was born in the late 1850s and everyone I knew was fat.

Cos those nappies may prevent vou talking sh1te!!

Smoking is disastrous for people's health on an individual & societal level. Wrt all your stupid posts about people being less obese in previous decades & you glibly attributing this to smoking more in those decades:
firstly, correlation is not causation, I.e. IF people are heavier (or more obese) now that's much more likely to be because of less exercise & manual work, changes in diet (processes foods & sugar) & lifestyle, and certainly not due to cancer & heart disease inducing smoking.

If you seriously believe all the nonsense you're proposing here, I probably need to smoke some of what you're smoking, cos it must be great to escape reality like that!?

Assuming by your post that you're under 10 years old- maybe do some research before posting such garbage 🤗

It's easy to mock, but I think the OP might be onto something here.

The trouble is, there were quite a few changes made around the same time smoking levels started to drop - and we can't be certain which was responsible for the changing obesity rates. So we need to think bigger.

I propose we also bring back leaded petrol, asbestos, London smogs, unregulated gin distillers, cars without seatbelts, bread rationing, and mixing alum and plaster of paris into flour, just to be on the safe side.

And TB. There's nothing like a TB epidemic for bringing obesity rates right down.

@Fragmentedbrain I don’t think you’re going far enough tbh. Never mind smoking, how about crystal meth? Great for weight loss, would certainly pep up productivity at work, and would save on dentistry once no one had any teeth left. Foolproof.

No. In 1970, average life expectancy in the UK was 75 for women and 68.7 for men. In 1980, average life expectancy was 76.8 for women and 70.7 for men. Nowadays, it's 83 for women and 79 for men. There are many reasons for the increased life expectancy, but the decline in smoking is certainly one of them.

I grew up in the 90s next to an area of high long term unemployment where people almost expected not to work when out of school, and everyone smoked. Even if they couldn't afford other things they had ciggies. They weren't fat but they weren't healthy by a long shot, and yeah they chatted and socialised but it wasn't and isn't exactly an aspirational area or place people really want to live.

Don't think your argument stacks up, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease and this is a good example.

I have on occasion wondered this myself.

But I also think that “wellness” makes people less healthy so will probably be dismissed as an idiot too.

I’ve never smoked btw

I assume that you just want people to agree with you that smoking is s? I can't think of any other reason that somebody would ask what is barely a question. Smoking cigarettes is mediaeval, it is literally only because all the damage is hidden on the inside that people do it at all and for so long. Then again maybe you do smoke and it's the lack of oxygen to your brain that's made you ask such a dumb f question? Who knows, can't believe I've logged into mum's net just to answer you. 😞

I'm gone back to YouTube because I'm dying to know what an AIBU is!?!! Is it like a WAIFU? I'm out of here. And if I catch you smoking I'm going to make you eat the whole pack (!)

Sure. And perhaps we should go back to sending children to work up chimneys, in factories and down mines, because that stopped them becoming obese.

And it’s a well-known fact that people were much healthier during and immediately after WW2, so let’s start another world war and then continue with rationing for years afterwards.

DM was an obese smoker with chronic anxiety who lived to be 96. DH, in the 60s-70s smoked, as a young sailor in the Royal Navy, as it was encouraged. He stopped in 2005, but has terrible COPD which I fear will carry him off well before his time. His DSis died at 66 of lung cancer, smoking to the end. DH coughs just like my DGF who was gassed on the Somme - it's a terrible affliction.

AIBU means "Am I being unreasonable?"

Are smokers nowadays thinner than non-smokers? Diet was completely different in the past.

Ahh.. a fat hate thread disguised as a pro-smoking thread.

Dying of emphysema and cancer being cheaper and less offensive than fatties waddling around everywhere I guess?

Look up 'causation vs correlation' - there are many many more factors at play in the issues you mention than merely smoking vs not smoking.

If you're certain that correlation = causation, then try these for size:

'Children drink much more water through the day now than they did 40 years ago - SEN is much more frequently DX now than 40 years ago. Therefore drinking more water causes SEN'.

'Dog attacks have risen dramatically following the legalisation of gay marriage - therefore gay marriage causes dog attacks'.

Are you starting to see how ridiculous this is?

I think you’ll find the difference is more likely diet & exercise - people don’t constantly guzzle soft drinks and sugary Starbucks coffees in France and Italy. They also walk everywhere and buy fresh, seasonal produce, and also tend to have smaller meal servings. The exercise & better food would also help address MH. A lot of our issues are from sitting on our arses in front of tv/on devices, shoveling sugar and stodge into our gullets like bloody pelicans. Also, people are smoking less and less in Europe.

My Dad's side of the family all smoked and most of them died far sooner than they should have done through smoking related illnesses. My own dear Dad died of lung cancer aged 77 - he could never quite give up the habit but he started smoking around the age of fifteen in the fifties when it was a virtual rite of passage for young people to take up smoking, especially boys. I remember one occasion when DH and I were sitting opposite each other many years ago in a room full of relatives on my Dad's side. We could not see each other through the fug of smoke. Everywhere was full of smoke. I was born in the sixties and a child of the seventies and virtually no living room decor was complete without a huge chrome ashtray on a pedestal. People would hand round cigarettes like sweets. There were toy pipes and sweet cigarettes for children. At this time, the dangers of smoking for oneself were becoming more widely spread but hardly anyone knew about the dangers of passive smoking. I have had asthma all my life and, as a child, remember nights propped up on pillows, struggling to breathe. If I caught a cold it invariably turned into bronchitis or a chest infection of some sort. This was not helped by the fact that the medications of the time were rudimentary and not very effective, to say the least. When I was eighteen, my Dad started smoking outside. The difference to my health was palpable. If I caught a cold it was far less likely to turn into bronchitis. If Dad had realised this when I was a child he would have stopped smoking indoors years earlier. As for the notion that we were all healthier "back then" because the obesity rate was lower and that the high rate of smoking was largely responsible, this is total nonsense. People might have been thinner but they were definitely not healthier as they tended to die years earlier on average than they do these days. I would rather be obese than a smoker.

ma’ma people have anxiety because of cigarettes it doesn’t help it causes

Interesting - on the same website, I looked at European Nations Where People Live The Longest. The winner is France: "The country has one of the lowest rates of cardiovascular and coronary disease. In 2015, the average life expectancy of the French was 83 years; 86 years for females and 80 years for males."

France has the 13th highest smoking rate in the world, with 34.6% of the population smoking. UK is 96th at 14.2%.

So there must be more to it.

Not necessarily related: 10.92% of French people are obese, compared to 28.71% in the UK.

Well I thought the op was the stupidest post I’ve ever read until I got to this.

No one said smoking is the only reason people get cancer FFS, but it’s undoubtedly one of the reasons.