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)

I used to smoke a lot.
I was still obese.

I gave up smoking over five years ago, and gained even more weight.

I was toying with the idea of starting smoking again, to see if I could lose some weight, when GLP-1s arrived.

Yay Mounjaro! I've now lost over 7st without smoking.

I was born in the early 60s and started .y nurses training in 1981
People most certainly weren't healthier. There was a lot of malnutrition and TB that required many months of isolation in hospital, plenty of cancer and alcoholism all the usual vascular diseases from smoking. It was very depressing.

😂

I'd be fine with this tbh

Most people can't get mounjaro, though.

Do a smoker’s lungs look healthy, @Fragmentedbrain?

Smoking also causes atheroma - a build up of plaque in the blood vessels that can easily cause a heart attack or a stroke.

Smoking in pregnancy makes babies smaller.

Cigarettes contain all sorts of toxins - how is it healthy to inhale these things on purpose?

How ridiculous. I was born in the mid-1950s and I assure you there were fat smokers (and non-smokers) in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and every decade before and since. There are more fat people now because they eat less healthily and are less active, not because they’re not smoking.

Smokers stink and make everyone and everything around them stink.

Correlation does not equal causation.
Just because people were less prone to being obese in the past it doesn't follow that it was because they smoked. Food habits have changed.
Anxiety was a thing in the past but it was under diagnosed, there is not more of it now.
Your logic is faulty.

This!!!

You had breakfast, lunch, dinner, mostly cooked from scratch. Saturday was sweets or ice-cream day. You didn't have to count steps because you walked everywhere, or cycled.

And babies were born tiny due to either mums smoking or mum's breathing in passive smoke. Hence smaller people

Op i think people have swapped one addiction for another, ie tobacco for sugar.

People used to sit down with a coffee n fag now it's coffee n biscuits

I was thinner when I smoked and it certainly helped my anxiety!
It wasn't until I stopped smoking I had a complete MH breakdown which I really believe was to do with using smoking as a coping strategy and then having to relearn how to cope.

However, my health was starting to suffer, I had a constant cough, I couldn't catch my breath when doing even light exercise. My teeth were shocking with the staining not to mention the cosmetic side of stained teeth and bad breath.
I was also very aware that COPD and emphysema. It is a horrible way to die and having watched a parent die this way due to a lifetime of smoking, I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy, it's horrific, slow and painful whilst robbing the person of all their dignity.

I think if we can teach the next generation to not even start to get involved or interested in smoking it will be a very good thing!

I do see your point about smoking and obesity. But I don't think replacing one unhealthy habit with another is necessarily better.

I was going to suggest heroine but, sure, we can take it gradually.

No - smoking does not make you healthier.
It is an appetite suppressant, which is not necessarily a good thing, if you are not eating enough nutrients (essentially malnourished).
Then you can develop emphysema and the increased effort to just breathe helps you lose weight - it’s not fun struggling to breathe constantly.
Then you get cancers. Another not recommended way to lose weight. You have biopsies, scans, surgery (which can be very extensive), chemotherapy, radiotherapy, more scans, more scares, more biopsies, more surgery/chemo/RT.
Doesn’t sound like a great anxiolytic to me.

I mean of we could take away the bad things about smoking like the smell and the way it literally kills you then you might have a point

You're confusing correlation with causation.

I think you're forgetting that we didn't have as many fast food outlets or the 'fat positivity' movement. Nor did we have quite as many convenience foods - we certainly didn't have the convenience of microwaveable ready meals.

Sweets were more of a treat. There wasn't the expectation that families would keep a shelf full of 'snacks'.

We did have fat people, but not quite as many and they were rarely as obese as those nowadays, though we also had doctors prescribing speed so that people could slim in the '60s and '70s.

One of my classmates was prescribed amphetamines at the age of 10/11 (1970). A few years later, my aunt died of a supposedly unrelated cerebral haemorrhage after being prescribed them by her doctor. Aunty was a smoker and smoking hadn't done much to help her lose weight.

Correlation is not causation.

Yes, a higher proportion of people smoked, fewer people were obese and anxiety was less spoken about in the past (no idea about actual prevalence of anxiety though).

But, just maybe, it isn't smoking that caused those effects, and just maybe, there are some other common factors of changes in society that might be driving all these changes, no?

As a lifelong non smoker who was stuck in a house and unventilated cars with a chain smoking dad for my entire childhood (a dad who died from cancer age 69) I would not be surprised if cancer is what carries me off regardless of how healthily I choose to live my life. Smoking has impacted way more people than the smokers out there. So you’re being unreasonable.

I think you're dismissing the many terrible consequences of smoking! And it's nothing to do with not smoking that causes anxiety. Do some research before you post any more nonsense.

Ah. I was beaten to it.

Yes, smoking to to blame.for obesity, not the other massive lifestyle factors that have shifted in the past 30+ years 🙄

Enjoy fishing OP?

Have to admit, made some good connections in smoking shelters when I used to go out!

Why do you see addiction to food as a moral failing but not addiction to cigarettes?
Is it about aesthetics? You think smoking looks cool and fat people don't?k

Ah yes, people weren’t fat in the 70s when more people smoked so the two are definitely connected.

Did you also know alcohol makes you immune to electrocution? Tis true, in the Middle Ages everyone drank beer or wine cos the water was bad, but hardly anyone got electrocuted.

No. I smoked for years. I'm overweight and suffer from anxiety. Nicotine addiction increases anxiety. I was always in a state of withdrawal and needed to smoke to relieve the nicotine cravings and anxiety. When it was the nicotine addiction causing the anxiety in the first place.

I quit a few years ago and am healthier and calmer now.