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)

As a teenager I bought in to the myth back in the 80s and 90s that smoking would keep my weight down. What a load of BS! I have spent my entire adult life anxious about eating and have developed disordered thinking around food. Unsurprisingly, I have been overweight almost the entire time. So no, I don’t think it made me healthier but it did contribute to the unhealthy life I was leading. I have successfully given up the cigs and as a result I am fitter and healthier than I have ever been because I can do so much more. I definitely attribute that to not smoking.

In my job, I meet a lot of older people with some awful illnesses and diseases where the contributory factor was smoking. Many of them tell me they wish they had never taken up smoking if they knew what their futures might look like. It’s easier to take the road to the short term fix - it fits the disposable nature of our society today. It’s a braver person that rejects this and focuses on the longer, harder road which requires you to take responsibility and put in the hard work to look after yourself.

In England, a review of child asthma deaths (2019-2023) found a significant link between smoking and the severity of asthma attacks, leading to a higher risk of death. Specifically, the review highlighted that smoking by family members was present in nearly half (43%) of the cases of child asthma deaths. This exposure to secondhand smoke is a known trigger for asthma attacks and is particularly concerning for children.
This is reason enough what a stupid post.

Is that you Nigel?

Why does “going down the pub” link in any way to smoking? I’m a pub goer and a non smoker. It has never once been an issue.

Wow… despite clear, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence, people are pulling out the “He never smoked in his life” chestnut instead of looking at the horrid mortality rate of people who do.

I was hooked up to a nebuliser for my terrible asthma every four hours until I left home. I had grown up with several hospital admissions a year. Moving out of a house with four smokers cured my asthma almost instantly. I literally haven’t even used a puffer in more than thirty years.

Both of my parents died of cigarette- related disease. My younger brother aged 50 has quite advanced COPD. He will be on oxygen soon.

I have never smoked. I exercise and eat lots of fresh fruit and veggies. I don’t eat sugar or drink much alcohol. (Also a difference between France, Italy and UK & Australia. The Europeans rarely drink to excess. It’s considered to be ugly and uncouth.)

The mortality rate for most modern illnesses is directly linked to excess - excess food, excess fat, excess sugar, excess alcohol and excess smoking. (Think Hebet VIII, Elvis, etc) People lived better because they had no choice but to approach all of these in a moderate way.

FAR far fewer though. Maybe just the non smokers 😅
OP - I'd have to say no, due to passive smoking, and the effects on children in particular.

Half of smokers die from smoking

How can anyone encourage smoking?!

Smoking killed my mum at 61. Before she died her lungs were basically shot and she spent 2/3 years on a nebuliser pretty much housebound. She was permanently gasping for breath. She was one of many. No people were not healthier when they smoked.

The PP is correct.
Smoking does cause cancer. It’s a major cause of cancer.
Not everyone who smokes will get cancer.
And not everyone who gets cancer would have smoked.

The current obesity issues are not cause by a lack of smoking.

It’s due to lifestyle - sedentary jobs, driving, conveniences around every day tasks (washing machines instead of handwashing, for example), the plethora of restaurants, take aways, cafes etc etc

And yet we do know the long term effects of smoking, but still have people advocating it as a solution to obesity…

Smokers are four times more likely to have a baby die of SIDS. The stillbirth rate is 47% higher for smokers. So if you think it’s better to have thin mums and dead babies, carry on.

In 2001, cigarette company Philip Morris produced a report to say that smoking was a good thing for a country’s finances, because smokers died sooner & so didn’t need to be cared for in old age.

Startlingly honest.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Finance_Balance_of_Smoking_in_the_Czech_Republic

Jeanne Calment lived for more than 2 years past the age of 120; no one else has lived to that age. Her relative longevity is much more impressive than most records (eg Usain Bolt’s in the 100m). Perhaps the majority of women smoked when she was a young adult, but a large proportion didn’t. (Male smoking more universal in those years.) If smoking was so very bad for longevity how can the oldest ever person have smoked, and almost until her death?

Jeanne Calment is the most extreme statistical outlier in terms of longevity in history. She lived to be nearly 123 - some seven years longer than the next oldest person ever. Have you any idea how extreme a difference seven years becomes when you’re talking that sort of age? It’s almost like living an extra lifetime. There is way more to assess in her case than smoking!

That is assuming she was actually who she claimed to be. More than one researcher has put forward the hypothesis that her daughter Yvonne, who supposedly died in 1934, was actually posing as Jeanne, having taken on her mother’s identity to avoid death duties.

GLPS have been around along time. albeit not to treat obesity. Their anti inflammatory properties are being noted plus other benefits.

I have never smoked but grew up in a household of multiple smokers. As a child I was wheezy when exercising and colds had a nasty, frequent habit of becoming ear infections.

After about a year of living smoke-free, those problems faded away.

While DM is still in reasonably sound health in her mid-80s (although has a permanent persistant cough that is alledgedly nothing to do with 65 years of light smoking...) DF died of cardiovascular disease in his early 50s. Smoking wasn't the only factor and his lifestyle was textbook "how to clog your arteries" but I certainly didn't miss the cigar smoke when he gave up following his first heart attack in his late 40s.

There are many ways people can fuck their health up, but smoking is the one that has the greatest ability to damage the health of people nearby, and going back to the 80s, it was near ubiquitous in any public indoor space. "No smoking zones" were becoming established then but the smoke just drifted through from the smoking area anyway.

I do not want to see (smell, inhale) any ressurgence of smoking and a reduction in vaping wouldn't go amiss.

I think OP's stance is better dead than fat.

Being obese is a lot less dangerous than smoking. Smoking is extremely high up on the list of the worst things you can do for your health.
Don't equate health with weight. Your life expectancy at an obese (but not morbidly) BMI is better than it is at an underweight (but not dangerously) BMI.

People were thinner yes but that doesn't mean healthier.

Sadly it seems like you're right.

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.

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?

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.

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

https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations