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)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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???

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

And what happens when you have to stop taking them?

I do love the OP's username...

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Don't recognise yours.... and you re not really adding much to the discussion either....

Or are you saying we are all getting healthier and adult social care is no longer an issue?

The reverse of that is if there are less obesity then there is more pressure on young people to stay slim.

It's easier to drop a few pounds than to drop a few stone.
We all seem to have forgotten what normal looks like not helped by vanity sizing and jeans with stretch.

No, I am saying that not all elderly people come to the same bleak end you seem so convinced they do. My MIL just turned 86 and is fitter, healthier and has more energy than I do at 57 (chronic health issues). Similar story with my dad who got to his mid-80s before ill health set in.

Yes, they are/were lucky and many of their cohorts haven't been. Yes, dementia will catch up with many of us if we live long enough, but statistically it's still a minority. Which is not to trivialise how distressing it is for those who get it, but I'm just getting a tad fed up of this narrative from some on MN that we'd better all hope for an early demise otherwise we're going to go out screaming and shitting the bed.

And to imply that smoking isn't all bad because at least you die fast is plain bizarre.

Good point.

All these new 'wonder' drugs always end up having a nasty downside. Vaping was thought to be brilliant, and then they discovered popcorn lung. Going back further, we have Thalidomide which caused missing and deformed limbs in babies. Diazepam which was found to be highly addictive if used for long periods. These are just things off the top of my head. It just makes me very sceptical.

The winner is France: "The country has one of the lowest rates of cardiovascular and coronary disease.

This is probably due to French death certification practices, which allow the cause of death to be recorded as "sudden death" ("mort subite"), especially if it's a massive unexpected heart attack outside of a healthcare setting.

In fact death certification is widely variable even within countries. There are parts of the US where the death rate from atherosclerotic heart disease (as measured by what's on the certificate) is 2% and others where it's 20%. This again is very likely to be substantially the result of local medical practices and traditions.

Also, WorldAtlas.com is basically a listicle site. The top 16 countries in that list only have 1 year difference in life expectancy between them, and those figures are 10 years out of date. But in any case, the "lowest rates of cardiovascular and coronary disease" is just a bit of throwaway content. Given that those diseases are the biggest killers in most countries, if they really were much lower in France then surely we would expect France to be several years out in front of the other countries.