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)

Thinner also doesn't automatically = healthier!

My widowed friend is nearly 81 and she walks a mile each way to visit me once every couple of weeks. She has osteoarthritis and a mild type of eczema, but that's all. She has never smoked and only drinks occasionally. She takes part in the library reading group who get together once a month, and the U3A writing group. She also goes to her DD's house a couple of times a week (two buses) to be there for when her youngest GD gets home from school.

I, on the other hand, am 66 and have multiple health conditions which all basically started 20 years ago. It's fine to get old if you are fit and healthy with lots of social interaction, but not so good if you have lots of health conditions. I certainly believe in quality over quantity.

Lifestyle risk factors can prevent upwards of 40% of dementia cases. (Up to 60% of cancer cases can be prevented with lifestyle changes also.)

One of the major lifestyle risk factors for both is smoking, and includes passive-smoking:

• Stop smoking uptake and support individuals to stop smoking (which the authors stress is beneficial at any age).

The Lancet: 40% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by targeting 12 risk factors throughout life | Alzheimer's Society

There's no way this is a real question. You'd have to have the brain of a sparrow to even think this for a brief second.

Obesity is being caused by messed up food, fast food, pushing fast food constantly, internet and gaming addictions, incredibly low numbers of people exercising and eating healthily, people driving everywhere instead of as they used to walking nearly everywhere, and all sorts of immune deficiences and illness that are huge in the current population. There are about a hundred threads to pull at re obesity. Being addicted to cigarettes is not one.

Smoking as well as being obese would give you an even bigger chance of dying early.

But you already know this.

It's fine for you to die early if you want that.

No matter if you personally consider other people's level of social interaction or health to be of an acceptable degree to make their life worth living or saving, most want to live.

I remember when lots of older people smoked and they would have the most awful goopy deep coughs I've ever heard. It sounded like they were about to hack up a lung.

A lot of obesity is related to diet and the changes in food production, at least in the US. We eat a lot of food shaped objects with little nutritional value

Define early. Is it 70, 80, 90, 100?

Some people can cope with certain health conditions better than others. I have multiple health conditions and seem to get another one each year. Not only does that affect me, but it also affects my DD who has to take me to numerous medical appointments. I could get hospital transport, but that's a right old kerfuffle and my stress levels would go through the roof! At the moment, she is also taking my DP to his medical appointments as he is terminally ill with lung cancer.

Perhaps you would enjoy being a burden to others, but I certainly wouldn't. I already have a care package in place, and certainly wouldn't want to be cared for 24 hours a day. If you are reasonably fit and well, you can't possibly say how you would feel if your health majorly deteriorated. What's right for you, might not be right for others, and I was only expressing how I feel. I certainly wasn't advocating for anyone else.

Make your case for being Doctor Death somewhere else, this is a weird, creepy and deeply offensive post and absolutely irrelevant to the thread.

As I said, you die early if you want. I genuinely do not care one way or the other, weird internet stranger, you do you.

And those who want to keep living can keep doing that.

There is nothing more to say.

I have reported this with the following comment: "Deeply offensive, Doctor Death shoving euthanasia down other people's throats."

Of course it's better that people achieve and maintain a healthy weight, but I wonder what the economic impact will be. I sometimes think food is the only growth industry in the UK. Coffees, smoothie bars, candy stores, new fast food places springing up every week. And then the entire supermarket aisles dedicated to chocolate and crisps. If people become self-conscious about their weight, these trades are in for a rude awakening. I read recently about restauranteurs starting to worry because of the sheer numbers of people on WLI and only picking at food.

Very good point about the economy.

Successive governments have done a good job of killing of pubs, maybe restaurants will be next. SNP did their best with the covid nonsense (safe to go for lunch but not dinner)

It's crazy we really need heavy industry back.

They’ve been around 10 plus years, they’re not s new drug.

They have been around a long time for treating diabetics - an already sick population. In the current usage for weightloss, they have not been around a long time, and longterm effects are unknown for this population.

Utterly ridiculous rage bage post. Smoking causes cancer. There is nothing remotely healthy about it. And, worse, it causes OTHER people to get cancer too! Next question.

Don't be ridiculous OP, obesity has not increased due to less smoking. Society has changed in those 50 yrs. Manual labour has dramatically reduced and the options of unhealthy foods has rocketed.

If smoking had continued as the way it was all we have today is obese smokers sat at desks

You've taken what i've said totally out of context (let alone implied smoking isn't all bad...) and woven a narrative around it.

I've also never said that everyone ends up in a CH with dementia either.

My point is that we have reduced smoking rates which should have led to longer and healthier lives but have not taken advantaged of this, instead doing less exercise and replaced smoking with poor food choices, becoming so fat that even airline seats are often too small for our fat lardy arses...and that sadly includes children...

Wow, @samarrange, didn't know that about mort subite. Seems a bit of a cop-out!

My apologies. They have been around for about 20 years, but not been used on the huge scale that we see now. My friend ended up having to have an urgent cholecystectomy after taking Mounjaro, so that has definitely put me off!

I am not advocating euthanasia at all!

I am just saying that for me, personally, I believe in the quality of life, not the quantity. It was said to me by my oncologist when I had triple negative breast cancer and opted for a mastectomy rather than months of gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy (that incidentally would have taken place during the first lockdown). That treatment would have taken about eight months, whereas I was cancer-free in six weeks. My choice of treatment was absolutely right for me at the age of 60, but obviously wouldn't be right for everyone.

It was also said to DP at his first oncology appointment. Are you suggesting that all these oncologists stop using the phrase because you don't like it?

I also know someone else who had bowel cancer which spread to the liver. After a few years of gruelling treatment, he decided to stop the treatment and his decision was respected by his oncologist. Someone else I know who had lung cancer decided he didn't want the treatment as it would only be prolonging his life by a few months. It wouldn't be a cure.

My friend has recently lost her mum after she had spent five years in a care home. My mum spent two years in one before she died. She originally spent a year with me, but then became too poorly and I also had to consider the welfare of my two DC (their quality of life) who were young at the time. Both myself and my friend have said we definitely don't want to end up in a care home.

I absolutely respect your decision to want to live as long as possible no matter what your quality of life. It's a shame you are unable to respect mine.

The UK also has a tradition of inquests for any sudden death, just to make sure it's all above board. Most of these are formalities but it still gets done properly. So there's always a medical opinion of what specific disease caused the death because the coroner won't accept "He just keeled over on the way to the bus stop". In contrast, in France (and many other European countries) there have to be positive suspicious circumstances before any sort of formal investigation is started.

of course there were. There maybe be more now but this has little to do with smoking.

Smokers in the 70's/80's weren't fat, but no-one was fat back then, not everyone smoked either.

My mothers generation smoked, her mothers generations didn't, all slim in 70/80's.

Once the general public started to pile on the weight, mid 90's, smoker's did too.

I have 👀 1000s of over weight people smoking.

No narrative. You juxtaposed a grim picture of later life/old age with the statement that smoking-related illnesses kill people faster than dementia. I don’t know what other conclusion you expect people to draw. Plus you haven’t backed up your statement that ‘the average person today’ will develop a chronic illness or become obese. Personally I disagree with you, but given the way you’ve spoken both about obesity and about those who choose to tackle obesity in a way you don’t personally approve of, you’ll be happy to hear I’m done interacting with you. You seem to have a very large chip on your shoulder about certain things and aren’t showing any openness to other POVs, so really what's the point?

OP I'm knocking on for 70 so remember the universality of smoking in the 60's and 70's very well.

Yes, most adults smoked, but very very few children did so how is it that so many kids nowadays are overweight and obese yet hardly any were when I was a child? Smoking or not has nothing to do with that has it!

Take away (aka Fisn & chips) was a rare treat, as was chocolate and sweets. People's lives weren't nearly so sedentary. Housework was WORK with no modern washing machine that span (mangles were the thing), and cleaning products leant more towards elbow grease.

Kids didn't get driven to school - cars were so infrequent we used to write down number plates as they passed on our main road! People walked far, far more.

Sure smoking suppresses appetite - but that's a really tiny reason why people were thinner back then. Miniscule.

Oh and it made the national news headlines if someone reached 100 - a really rare and extraordinary event - nowadays it's commonplace.

It's a illusion that people are getting fatter from not smoking.

My niece works in busy newsagents in Dublin city the weekends, they sell 1000's of packets of cigarettes weekly, double that smoking rolling papers and tobacco packs, triple that on vapes.

I don't know why people think people are not smoking in some form, if anything vaping has encouraged non smokers to start.

People are still very much inhaling, while the obesity rates are increasing.

And WeightWatchers are in financial trouble now due to WLI.