Why Smoke when Lung Cancer is a leading cause of death?

[Michaelangelica]

There are two reasons which are understudied and under-researched. Possibly because doctors have such a limited repertoire of tests and drugs and are so poor at diagnosing and dealing with these problems. Partly because the MD has to rely on the "unscientific' reports of the patient. (ie Doc has to listen to and believe what his patient is saying. Arrogance and intellectual snobbery prevents many a good diagnosis)

1. Pain

Possibly the human condition 'most badly' or untreated by the medical fraternity--especially long term cronic pain.

Nicotine is a pain killer. See:

Nicotine to Snuff out Pain :The Scientist [28/3/2005]

Many people suffer from chronic untreated pain. Also a surprising few/(many?) suffer from silent or "painless" pain. I include in this 'mental suffering'-depression, anxiety, loss. It seems more than a coincidence that 90% of people hospitalised for 'psychiatric disorders' smoke (I.M. oberservations). Note also that nicotine is a more effective painkiller with women- who are now the sex most likely to smoke and to be now taking up smoking. Note also that nicotine is synergistic with opioids--perhaps why many with "addictive personalities" (!?) smoke.

I suspect nicotine will be found to be synergistic with other pain killers like caffeine, marijuana and perhaps even alcohol.

2. Allergies food/chemical intolerances

Nicotine jags the adrenals into action. Food allergies and chemical intolerances (combined with modern day stress?) 'exhaust' the adrenals (Not a term you will find in any conventional medical text). So it is likely that nicotine masks allergies and makes symptoms temporarily more tolerable.

 

I suspect there is a racial/genetic component/factor in all this yet to be discovered.

[Michaelangelica]

[LaurieAG]

Both my parents have ancestors that lived in cramped, crowded and smokey conditions for many hundreds of years out of necessity for eking out an existence in harsh climates.

 

Going back hundreds and thousands of years before that you will probably find that those hot, crowded and smokey conditions were either the norm or they in fact provided a much better quality of life than those times preceding them. In a way the harshness of the basic lifestyle provided its own evolutionary 'survival of the fittest' process that, at the end of the line, resulted in me.

 

The increase in asthma and diabetes today are a direct result of our own medical marvels and our ability to alter natural processes and our environment so that many more people today survive to adulthood than the much smaller percentages of yesteryear.

 

We are already finding out the unwanted side effects of human interference in natural processes in many different spheres from global warming to population explosions and, to make matters worse, we seem to have abolished major wars and epidemics that served to act as a natural control on our populations in the past.

 

I think the human race will have many more serious problems of a similar nature over the next 100 years. The only viable long term answer really depends on letting nature take its course eitherway because if we punish people for smoking or withold medical treatments we must treat other modern excesses, such as obesity and substance abuse, in a similar punitive way.

 

The only certainty we have is that human civilisations always revert or are superseded by other more advanced civilisations (with more refined and advanced excesses) despite the best attempts of the respective experts of the time.

 

I have a strong feeling that that within the next couple of hundred years living in cramped, crowded and smokey conditions out of necessity for eking out an existence will be considered quite natural for the surviving pockets of humans of that time.

[Zythryn]

Both my parents have ancestors that lived in cramped, crowded and smokey conditions for many hundreds of years out of necessity for eking out an existence in harsh climates.

 

Going back hundreds and thousands of years before that you will probably find that those hot, crowded and smokey conditions were either the norm or they in fact provided a much better quality of life than those times preceding them. In a way the harshness of the basic lifestyle provided its own evolutionary 'survival of the fittest' process that, at the end of the line, resulted in me.

 

You seriously aren't trying to equate smoke from fires used for warmth to the chemical soup that is included in modern cigarettes, are you? Really??

[LaurieAG]

Hi Zythryn,

 

You seriously aren't trying to equate smoke from fires used for warmth to the chemical soup that is included in modern cigarettes, are you? Really??

 

You miss my point entirely, I was talking about Peat fires.

[Jerome29]

From the movie Diabolique:

 

[Nicole lights her cigarette]

Leo: Second-hand smoke kills, you know.

Nicole: [blowing smoke in Leo's face] Not reliably.

[Jerome29]

I'm also smoking since I'm 17. Now I'm 35. With the time I thought I would grow and quit smoking, but nahhh.... Life became more and more stressing and it is not so easy to do it. Now I'm just trying to smoke not so often as I was used to. But sometimes, the desire is just uncontrollable and I smoke when even I'm indeed calm.

Many times it can be that I don't imagine why I'm smoking at that moment, funny, but this happens...