Smokers quit in record numbers amid Covid fears
bbc.com
bbc.com
Me, I ditched junk food (used to do taco bell drive-thru pretty regularly when coming home from work, stopped cold turkey too!). Doing a lot more salads now, I'm so happy that I'm developing a taste for healthy foods!
* Try a gluten test if you have had exposure recently enough to do it. It’s good to know.
* A sizeable chunk of people who have trouble with gluten may actually have trouble with fodmaps. They’re in everything wheat except sourdough bread.
Why does this matter? In the case of celiac you can’t have a crumb. In the case of fodmap trouble you can’t have a bunch of wheat, but a trace amount won’t hurt you.
I now have found gluten not to be an issue, and was able to identify a bunch of food triggers due to them being in the fodmap family. It’s made life simpler in that I know for sure I don’t have to worry about exposure, and can have moderate fodmaps as well.
Fodmaps are hard to get a handle on. There are good apps where you can quickly look up things you eat. Before that I never managed to try fodmap elimination because it was too complicated.
Note that I am not saying you, OP, don’t have a gluten problem. But there will be many people reading your post, who have digestive discomfort and other issues but nothing life threatening. To those people I would strongly recommend a gluten test before you quit, and check fodmaps if you test negative.
I had a wide variety of digestive symptoms that are similar to some celiac symptoms, but that was not the cause. And gluten being nearly all high fodmap makes for possible confounding.
(Fodmaps are mostly in carbs, so a low carb diet can also be a fodmap reduction diet)
Why is that? The only difference between sourdough bread and non-sourdough bread is yeast vs starter (and some people still use yeast in addition to their starter).
But the difference is a world apart.
The best example is rye bread, which won't develop a crumb without sour dough.
Concerning the fodmaps, it is the usually longer fermentation that reduces those.
True wheat sourdough is hard to find too. Most bakeries put in yeast and label it sourdough.
It has been noticed by many people who think they're gluten intolerant that they digest sourdough bread much better. The likelyhood that this is linked to the changes incurred by the fermentation process is high, since, as you said, that's the only difference.
Sourdough is a mixture of yeasts, lactobacter, and acidophilus in various proportions. The latter two will metabolize the FODMAPS, either while proving the bread or in your gut. One of those choices can cause discomfort and the other a delicious food product.
Commercial yeast vs. starter [naturally occurring yeast, flour, and water]
> The lactic acid produced by the lactobacilli gives it a more sour taste and improved keeping qualities.
I did realise your main point is that it does include yeast, and I agree with that.
Still drink wine every dinner and smoke a cigar everyday :)
I have started to really enjoy cider. There are some good ones from small makers. Golden State Cider makes some nice ones. All the big company ones (American) are crap full of sugar.
I've not much to add other than to say I'm very happy for you - it's hard to comprehend what a torment it is to have deal with conditions like that on a daily basis.
Turns out it was some sort of allergy resulting in Eosinophilic esophagitis. Now that they are medication, most all of the symptoms have dissipated.
If you are experiencing throat issues related to gluten (or other things in the exclusion diet) it may be worth getting checked out.
What were you eating before and what are you eating now?
We used to cook I would say 5/6 dinner meals a week but it’s strictly 7 now. Not too much change there, not intentional anyways. Maybe less snacking too but the only big intentional change has been the eating out.
That applies to food. It applies to reading, watching, and listening. It applies to your environment (e.g., friends).
The pandemic is a wakeup call. Let's hope - in some regards - we never go back to normal. The data is clear, that old normal (i.e., preventable preexisting conditions) played a key role in getting us here.
It doesn't help that the narrative continues to focus on the healthcare system. Yes, it can be improved. But supply is limited. We keep increasing demand. And expect prices to fall? That's not the way it works.
I've never lifted weights before but the kettlebell sounds appealing because it's supposed to be "functional strength", not overworking a single muscle like big gym machines can.
You can also make plates out of concrete, although that also requires more room than dumbbells and for you to already have a barbell.
Already had the weights, though.
No account or login, no ads or affiliate sales, and all programs are PDFs you can download.
Smoking is bad, don't even smoke or start vaping young people, you'll always regret it.
I made a conscious choice as Coronavirus was just getting its shoes on to completely stop drinking alcohol. I haven't felt this great in ages and intend to teetotal beyond the crisis.
The occasional dinner out with drinkers since some of the restrictions were eased has not been a problem and - company depending - as enjoyable as usual. I'll probably skip the pub socials when they reopen but dinners, lunches, and sports seem fine. Next stop: more exercise!
From there it can be contagious, with others questioning themselves drinking, or at least drinking less.
What's very annoying is the social pressure: feeling compelled to say something, anything, when somebody say they won't have that drink in a social gathering. Just shut the hell up! (Saying that to myself too!)
One cultural difference between Germany and the states is, that drunk-driving is much more actively shunned so its more acceptable to not drink.
They're annoyed because that would be like asking people to eat raw sugar to stop drinking Coca Cola, but I'm not yet stopping my cigarets :D
Nicotine itself is a mixed bag, it is addictive, but it seems to have some neuroprotective qualities.
I also noticed that it's important to involve smokers around you so that they don't offer you cigarettes. I also noticed a type of smokers who try to get me back to smoking. I found that doing stuff like destroying their cigarette pack when they try to have you get one with insistance was the best way to stop that.
Edit: I googled it, because someone downvoted it me so I guess they didn't appreciate me being lazy.
https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus...
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200430/smokers-hospitalize...
> "One hypothesis is that nicotine, which has anti-inflammatory properties, may interfere with the way that COVID-19 causes an overreaction of the immune system."
Edit: I had that wrong, it seems nicotine increases ACE2, but also binds with ACE2 decreasing the amount of available enzymes overall that COVID could bind to.[2]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin-converting_enzyme_... [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7191112/ [2]https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.14943
> Conclusions and relevance: Our cross sectional study in both COVID-19 out- and inpatients strongly suggests that daily smokers have a very much lower probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection as compared to the general population.
> Very recently, the US Center of Disease Control reported an analysis of current smoker rate among US COVID-19 patients which was found to be 1.3% for the whole population of COVID-19 patients, 1% for outpatients, 2% for patients, not hospitalized in an ICU, and 1% in intensive care unit (ICU)-admitted patients
https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3
in all of the mentioned countries, only about 1% of ICU cases are smokers. this has (perhaps unsurprisingly) not been widely reported.
Seriously though, it's baffling because smoking causes so many underlying health problems that don't go well with COVID. Also, smokers have a depressed immune system compared to nonsmokers, so it would seem to suggest they'd be less likely to fight off an infection like this.
Being a smoker has been a standard part of your medical history for a long time now for obvious reasons. There's no reason to think there is a coordinated strategy for lying about smoking in the context of a pandemic (much less revising patient medical histories, which would be the medical service industry lying).
50%+ lying about smoking in the face of potential (or actual) respiratory failure is laughable.
I don't know where you got 50%+. The outpatient group was 5.3% current smokers vs expected (adjusted for age and sex) 26.9%. For inpatient it was 4.4% vs expected 17.9%. The fact that both groups had the same reported rate of current smokers (within experimental error) but very different expected rates says to me that you're only getting the people who are honest or simply incapable of quitting even while sick.
Also, see this concern brought up:
> Finally, and I believe this to be the most significant piece of data supporting the null hypothesis, the prevalence of never-smokers in the general population is approximately 0.75, if one subtracts the smoking incidence rate from 100. In your patient groups, non-smokers are strongly under-represented by about a factor of 2 relative to the general population, with 31% of outpatient and 32% of inpatient being labeled as never-smokers. This suggests to me that any amount of smoking actually puts one at risk for contracting COVID-19 as defined by this paper.
In any case, many other studies of COVID-19 have found similar results, and studies of different respiratory diseases have not. I'd initially just thought people were lying too, but at some point the evidence becomes overwhelming--if the protective behavior were anything but smoking, then people would have accepted it long ago.
Of course smoking is far deadlier on average than the coronavirus, per my calculation elsewhere in this thread. No one should start smoking because of this, but I do see enough evidence e.g. that a nursing home patient (who's at very high risk of death from coronavirus, and likely to die of something else before smoking-related diseases could develop) shouldn't quit. Vaping probably gets any benefit with almost none of the health risk, though that's speculative.
1. http://beh.santepubliquefrance.fr/beh/2019/15/pdf/2019_15_1....
If most people that have severe COVID complications and end up on the ICU are aged 80+, and generally smokers die before that age from smoking-related complications, doesn't it naturally follow that most people on the ICU will be non-smokers? Smoking will have killed the smokers before they become part of the high-risk group, after all.
Here is a quote from the abstract of the paper linked above:
> Results: The inpatient group was composed of 343 patients, median age 65 yr: 206 men (601%, median age 66 years) and 137 women (39.9%, median age 65 years) with a rate of daily smokers of 4.4% (5.4% of men and 2.9% of women).The outpatient group was composed of 139 patients, median age 44 years: 62 men (44.6 %, median age 43 years, and 77 women (55.4 %, median age 44 years). The daily smokers rate was 5.3% (5.1% of men and 5.5 % of women). In the French population, the daily smokers rate was 25.4% (28.2% of men and 22.9% of women).
The average daily smoker rate is taken as-is over the whole population, and compared to the smoking rate of people of age around ~66 years, despite the article itself stating that the percentage of daily smokers is lower for old people and higher for young people.
So already in the abstract they have made a mistake and forgot to correct for age. I have not read the rest of the article in enough depth to judge fully, but I would absolutely not blindly trust researchers to always do this correction in an appropriate way.
>smokers with a positive Covid-19 test were more than twice as likely as non-smokers with coronavirus to be hospitalised.
> This aligns with research from the US which found hospitalised smokers with coronavirus were 1.8 times more likely to die.
is contradicted by the study showing that smokers with covid are more likely to have severe symptoms than non-smokers with covid.
While a lot of people are skeptical of the official numbers from these countries, I think they have free media and if cases were high, we would have known.
They give nicotine patches to nurses in pilot studies, how ironical :D
They also said elsewhere that a lot of researchers from outside epidemiology are running really bad studies and publishing papers.
Even with conservative assumptions, smokers in this French study were 4 to 5 times less likely to be infected.
Keep in mind that drugs being tested are considered good when they reduce mortality by 10%. We're talking 75% reduction in infection rate here, and no increased mortality in those who are infected. It's really really hard to imagine what sort of confounding factor that could be at play here that would make the effect insignificant.
Vaping is less clear--I do think there's some non-negligible chance that for the next couple years, it will be a net benefit to public health. That would be funny, considering how hard the public health authorities worked to smear nicotine vaping with the deaths from adulterated (vitamin E acetate) marijuana cartridges last summer.
By "net benefit", you mean because it can help people quit actual smoking, right?
Of course vaping's real benefit to public health comes from smoking cessation as you say, since smoking is (per my comment above) really deadly. I was disturbed to see the public health authorities blaming nicotine vaping for the lung injuries last summer, given (a) the ample evidence for vitamin E acetate as the cause; and (b) the cost in mortality from smokers who got scared by their misleading warnings and either didn't switch to vaping or switched back to cigarettes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0968-3
To quote this paper's author: "This virus is unusual and it's hard not to take a step back and not be impressed by how many manifestations it has on the human body"
and to quote the paper itself: "In a study of nearly 5,500 patients admitted with COVID-19 in a New York City hospital system, (acute kidney injury) occurred in 37%, with 14% of the patients requiring dialysis. "
and that is only one of dozens of conditions in their findings.
The average IFR over all ages is 0.7%[4] from a recent meta-analysis. If we're considering prospective smokers, then I guess we should exclude young children, so let's (again, somewhat arbitrarily) bump that up to 1%. That would mean a coronavirus infection in a random individual (age weighted according to population of prospective smokers) costs 0.1 years of life expectancy.
But smokers have life expectancy about ten years[5] shorter than non-smokers! So there's lots you could find to argue about in my rough calculation above, and I agree that patients who don't die immediately still lose some yet-unknown number of quality-adjusted years of life; but unless you think you can find two orders of magnitude, smoking is unquestionably more dangerous. That doesn't mean the coronavirus is harmless, just that smoking is really bad.
1. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e1.htm
2. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
3. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/08/98172/social-support-key-n...
4. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v...
5. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
Mildly OT, but, don't depend on popular news to get you the important info of the world.
I can downvote but rarely do it. Also a comment can only be downvoted 4 times. After that downvotes are not counted anymore if I remember correctly.
But I don't remember anything lower than that recently, so it can be a new change.
501 karma for downvoting
The people dropping dead in the streets, like we saw so much of in Wuhan (smoking population ~50%)-- those are the smokers. Smoking opens up more ACE2 receptors which is like opening more lanes for COVID traffic.
I'm reluctant to recommend quitting
Quit now!
"Nicotine could maintain or restore the function of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system and thus control the release and activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This could prevent or suppress the cytokine storm. This hypothesis needs to be examined in the laboratory and the clinical setting."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7192087/#!po=22...
I have a very rare immune mediated neurological disease affecting nicotinic receptors in my peripheral nervous system called autoimmune autonomic gangliopathy.
I am ganglionic nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antibody (nAChR, α3 subunit) positive, at high and abnormal levels, which means this antibody blocks signals at the ion channel level, in my neurons of my autonomic ganglia, which is supposed to control bodily functions—but it malfunctions in my body. Some people with the disease I have, (supposedly ~22% according to this PMC article on PUBMED: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2536520/) have alpha7 subunit nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antibodies (α7 nAChR antibodies), which effectively block signals in general, affecting transmission of signals via the ion channels of neurons in the central nervous system. This type of central nervous system blockade of the autonomic nervous system causes inflammation.
The article that the above poster linked is an ominous warning for people like me, who have the same very rare disease I have, even if one is just alpha3 nAChR antibody positive only—and is not also alpha7 nAChR antibody positive. I am glad I have been taking extreme steps to protect myself.
Also, some people that never recovered from COVID-19 have sympathetic nervous activity have similarities to the condition I have.
Researchers may want to search for autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy on PUBMED: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Autoimmune+autonomic+g...
You also may want to search for autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy and the alpha7 nAChR on PUBMED: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Autoimmune+autonomic+g...
Or α7 nAChR antibodies, which in theory would have a similar but different effect as the stuff that the poster above me linked: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%CE%B17+NAChR+antibodi...
As for the people who have a post COVID-19 inflammatory syndrome affecting their sympathetic (as in autonomic nervous system) nervous system, as in sympathetic over activity, they very likely have a form of dysautonomia:
Researchers may want to look into these antibodies/tests, in which there are several peer reviewed articles available to read. However, several of these tests are not commercially available in the US, but can be mailed/performed in Germany. See: https://www.celltrend.de/en/pots-cfs-me-crps.html
There is an immune mediated dysautonomia panel available at the Mayo Clinic (which I was found to have one of the antibodies), but one is far less likely to test positive for something in these screens. See this panel: https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-catalog/Overview/92121
A lot of this immune mediated autonomic nervous system stuff is just starting to emerge and come to fruition.
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/smoking-an...
> smokers with a positive Covid-19 test were more than twice as likely as non-smokers with coronavirus to be hospitalised.
>This aligns with research from the US which found hospitalised smokers with coronavirus were 1.8 times more likely to die.
If you want to give up, tried and failed, keep trying. Every time you make a serious attempt you are more likely to make it stick than the last time you tried. Pick a day a week out, prepare for it do it. Doesn't stick. Repeat.
It's one of the great myths that you can't because you didn't. You can and you're better placed to succeed at it. Do it for some people who love you. Good luck!
Quitting is not a result, it is an effort you make through your life. It can be pretty easy for some, others need to focus a bit more. Build a strong determination to quit and have a positive outlook on life and your decision. The latter drastically affects how you experience cravings.
It becomes natural after a while, but if one can start smoking out of nowhere, starting this habit again is not less probable. Quitting is a continuous effort, but it is worth it.
My interpretation of why this worked is, that from previously failed attempts (2 or 3 maybe), I had changed too much, and thrown away the packs and lighters.. I'd suddenly sit and think "that car.. it really needs refueling RIGHT. NOW. don't it?" and I'd drive to the gas station and when paying for gas, I'd say, as is tradition "and a pack of north state and a ligther please".. Brain finding a million excuses to go out and having to resist at those weak moments, was hard..
But having the pack always there made it a constant active choice of lower intensity rather than a more intense recurrent impulse.
I had to switch attention - each time I had a desire to smoke I run until there was no more. And it showed me immediate changes in the body, there was white sludge getting out of my lungs. First week was the hardest, second much easier, at its end I was so sure in success I've shared with friend. I said no one before to reduce pressure of failing.
After three weeks there was no craving, just easy fighting of occasional customs - like getting out of home, before bad, etc.
Several weeks later and food was never as delicious before. It was all cardboard by comparison. I still do not understand smoking in restaurant - just get any junk food, it is same.
Three month later was spring. Smells all around, it was another world, so beautiful.
---
Conventional wisdom is a lie, echo chamber. You will not hear my story in smoking crowds - I'm not there. Two of my friends quit smoking the day I've shared my success at the end of the second week. One started again after several years - depression and working conditions - it does not help, just a feeling "no there to fall deeper". There is.
The real hard part, in terms of actually prolonged success, is that party six month later, one year later, two years later, ...
You will never stay a casual, 2-3 cigarettes a week smoker. You permanently fucked this up for yourself. YOU ARE AN ADDICT FOR LIFE!
Apart from trying to be a good parent, i find that improving the chances of being alive as long as possible to maximize the time with the kid is important.
So any one of the things that can prevent this from happening, i try to keep under control, e.g. Smoking, Being overweight, not exercising, Drinking to name just a few.
As far as them reworking the supply chains, that’s me speculating.
In japan they are all built into the toilet, and sometimes the sink as well.
If you ever did a bathroom renovation and went to a decently large plumbing supply store, they had a full bidet section for a while now. This time, more people are actually going to look at it.
A large chunk of my peer group got cheap bidets at the beginning of the pandemic when toilet paper ran out, so it's at least semi normalized even though its not pervasive. I no longer have to explain what it is or why it's great. That's a massive step forward.
My doctor said that everybody has been one way or the other, either significantly decreasing or increasing the amount they smoke.
Of course, I am not laughing at their failure, but how these conclusions about smoking and quitting always seem very superficial. I don't doubt the same result globally after things change a bit. It always finds a way back for many, unfortunately.
Not saying it’s true, but the mechanism they report and dismiss here is not what I’d seen as the primary hypothesis about the protectiveness that smokers were demonstrating in the referenced studies
Less people smoking?
More people working from home?
Masks are commonly worn (will they become an outward marker of a person's inward beliefs?)
More online schooling?
More home cooking?
More bread from starter baking?
More at home exercising instead of going to a gym?
So I'm very curious what long term impact on society we are going to see with that many people having had that extreme and sudden of a change in their lifes. Whether the changes come from fear, protest, boredom, opportunism, etc.
However, something have changed and I feel like I'm going to die while I'm high, it's hard to breathe and feel my body isn't as healthy as it was before. I feel more or less ok while I'm sober, though.
Decided to quit yesterday and today I see this article. "Yeah, this is the moment".
So I think some people stopped smoking not because they're afraid of COVID, but because they feel worse now.
"Dr. Sarah Jackson, a senior research fellow at UCL’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, cautioned that the __findings relate only to quitting in the short term__.
“Given that __the rate of long-term success in quitting tends to be low, this is very unlikely to translate to a million fewer smokers in the UK__, which would be a large decline in prevalence,” she said.
"Other data sources are not yet showing evidence of a large drop in smoking prevalence," she said.
Pardon for assuming people actually read more about the study beyond a headline or two. It is based on self-reporting with a relatively small sample size. Literally the study is only indicating a record number of people _trying_ to quit.
Original Comment>
"Smokers try to quit..."
FTFY. I know two people that have quit heroin but still smoke despite many attempts to stop. I know people that couldn't quit cigs without antidepressants. All that to underscore that it's a seriously difficult addiction to overcome.
It mystifies me that people quite a bit younger than me smoke considering we've known for a long time that not only is it unhealthy, but it's a terribly money suck, very difficult to stop, cosmetically damaging and borderline antisocial at this point. Ironically most young people I've asked about this started smoking for social reasons in a given environment (school, job) and unfortunately will carry that baggage likely for decades.
EDIT: BTW, congrats, I don't mean to take anything away from you, doubly so because you did it cold turkey indicates some serious emotional willpower. But I think you're the exception. Here's some CDC numbers for you, seems like a little north of a ten percent success rate:
In 2015, 68.0% of adult smokers (22.7 million) said that they wanted to quit smoking.
In 2018, 55.1% of adult smokers (21.5 million) said that they had made a quit attempt in the past year.
In 2018, 7.5% of adult smokers (2.9 million) successfully quit smoking in the past year
In 2017, 2300 people per day started smoking (839k annually)
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess... https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...
Extended over the long term, it suggests over 50% of people quit within 10 years, and nearly 80% within 20 years.
This rings true for myself and most people I know who smoked in their 20s; almost all had quit by their early-mid 30s.
But a motivator also helps - i.e., a real health scare, like a a potentially-lethal virus that everyone is liable to catch and that disproportionately harms people with impaired respiratory health.
So we'd hope (indeed, expect) more people to succeed at quitting during this pandemic. And once they've quit and felt the benefits, many will stay quit for life.
The rest of your comment sounds as if you’re trying to convince me that it’s virtuous to attempt cessation. I appreciate that viewpoint and nothing in my comments (I believe) have suggested otherwise. Indeed, in my personal worldview anything so difficult to shake loose is worth gaining mastery over as a matter of principle, negative health effects aside.
My dad had never been able to quit smoking. I know how lucky I was to manage it.
[0] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/oct/e-cigarettes-may-help-ov...
High schools are a "super spreader event" for chemical addictions.
We moved from Hamburg and it’s bad there too. Everyone seemingly smoked.
I don't smoke and I really don't know what drives smokers.
But it's hard to believe that they are only concerned about their health now because of COVID-19 after all these years of pushing awareness about how smoking can damage your health and increase risk of cancer!
I know a few colleagues who could easily quit smoking if there were not sitting close to a heavy smoker friend. They just couldn't say no every time someone asked them to go out for smoking. I think lack of smoking socially is a big driver here.
I stopped smoking real cigarettes 2 years ago when I started running but I continued to vape tobacco heating products (I don't think you even have them in USA, like IQOS).
They are much less toxic and if COVID didn't happen I could've easily continued smoking them for the rest of my life, since the negative effects are much much less then real cigarettes.
Only when I quit for COVID health reasons did I finally understand how addicted I was to nicotine for the last 13 years, since I was a teenager.
> know a few colleagues who could easily quit smoking if there were not sitting close to a heavy smoker friend. They just couldn't say no every time someone asked them to go out for smoking. I think lack of smoking socially is a big driver here.
Yeah, no, nope, no way. Nicotine addiction is the big driver, social smoking is just how you get hooked.
Covid: Maybe 70k deaths, 11 years lost on average = 770k years
Smoking 1 million, say 5 years saved = 5000k years
(the 5 years is a guess, I think the real figure is nearer 10, the 11 years is from https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-mo...)
Of course it's better if I never smoke, but I don't personally have a problem with having cigarettes occasionally. I'm lucky in that I can smoke for a week and then get home from holiday and not be interested in smoking at all.
Good news no matter what.
I was a very heavy smoker for 20 years. Having discussed the topic with many people, I firmly believe that nicotine addiction varies dramatically from person to person. Some people can smoke a few cigarettes a week for years on end without any major symptoms of addiction. Others, like me, can't even imagine going more than an hour without a cigarette. Sick? Who cares, I'll still smoke a pack and a half a day. So ill that every single drag of a cigarette burns my throat like fire? I'll take pain meds and use chloraseptic spray, but no way I'm going without my cigarettes. It's not even up for debate.
When I finally quit 3 years ago, cold turkey after some failed attempts years prior, it was a living hell. It wasn't until month six in that I finally felt the irritability and constant mental distractions finally fade. It was brutal. Longer and more depressing than even the worst case scenarios I had formulated in my head after heavy research.
These days, you'd have to beat me bloody before I'd concede to consume nicotine. Within inches of my life. I'd rather face a dozen novel hells before facing that well-trod hellscape another time.
Quitting smoking for heavy smokers is a big deal. Not a "14% more likely" to developed generic symptoms big deal, as the article suggest. In fact, I've read before that smokers are less likely to suffer severely from COVID-19, a fact that, true or not, is precisely the kind of fact an addict's brain is wired to cling on to. Even if smokers are "1.8 times more likely to die", do you have any idea how easy it is for an addict's mind to explain that away? Addicts do - it's insanely fucking easy!
Point being, I don't think the threat of COVID-19 can fully explain why so many people quit smoking in the UK. I'm sure it helped push a few people over the edge, and that's great. But my own intimate knowledge with addiction makes me wonder what else might be at play.
Perhaps the lockdowns elicited a powerful and much-needed jolt to the otherwise routine lives most of us live? Perhaps the time all alone, or in constant contact with loved ones, changed perspectives in a way that everyday life could not? Maybe some people who smoked only when away from the home, like many smokers I have known, were forced to more fully confront their addiction?
I can imagine a thousand reasons why our disrupted lives in 2020 might compel addicts to take on and succeed at the terrifying task of quitting. But the old excuse of "it is bad for your health" is very, very low on the list. That's the reason addicts are most skilled at ignoring! I find the other possibilities, specifically the wide-scale and unprecedented disruption of routine, much more plausible.
(NOTE: I wholeheartedly recommend he book 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking' by the late Allen Carr. It was a very helpful motivator when I quit smoking.)
Much more beliavable explanation for me is massive change in daily habits. People being more forced being indoors, more limited access to stores, less social smoking like workplace and bars. And many more.
Without drastically changing yourself, most regular smokers will not quit it for good that easily.
The they I've fought it - imagined addiction as white monkey sitting on the neck and driving with reins [1]. The question was "am I a slave? that's disgusting"
[1] description of heroin addict from The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
On the other hand, it appears that former smokers are at a slightly higher risk of developing severe symptoms (though that seems less clear than the protective effect of active daily smoking)
This means that if you are a somewhat older smoker (i. e. over 30 or so) you should probably hold off the quitting until a vaccine becomes available.
> The institute tested almost 700 teachers and pupils of a school in Crépy-en-Valois in one of the hardest-hit areas in France, as well as their families. The “highly accurate” tests found that only 7.2 per cent of smokers from among the adults tested were infected while four times as many non-smokers, some 28 per cent, were infected.
> “Thus, current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the infection by SARS-CoV-2.”
Smoking Kills..
Good regardless, I’ve been thinking about quitting
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/smoking-appears-to-prot...
That is an astonishing amount of lipstick. Do you have a citation for this number?
This article talks about how it's not 7lbs, it's only 3.7 pounds of exposure (risk of ingestion and absorption) based on estimates and shows their math.
I'm guilty of forwarding a tenuous idea by repeating the 4 pound statement and not explaining the assumptions, but hell, even if it's 1 pound it's still a hell of a lot more than I ever assumed, though keep in mind it's over a lifetime (seven-eight decades).
Point was simply that exposure == some fractional consumption. Smoking a cigar certainly is not healthier for your lungs than abstinence even if you don't deliberately inhale.
Some women don't wear lipstick at all, so by the mean value theorem the average must be less than that number.
Hell, even if we get a 1% conversion rate, we'll be rich!
The previous straw analogy is accurate. It's the same effect with water via straw and smoke via cigar.
Velaric refers to another kind of airflow that is generated just within the oral cavity, and which doesn’t involve pulmonic airflow coming from the lungs. Instead it uses suction to create differentials in air pressure. Here’s how it works:
If you seal off air within some space, then increase the volume of that space – then the air pressure inside that space will decrease, and be less than the atmospheric pressure outside. If you then break the seal, air rushes in to equalise the pressure. The sudden equalisation of air pressure makes a short sharp noise.
The speech sounds made with this type of airstream are what we know as ‘clicks’.
There are two main ways that clicks can be formed: one seals the entire oral cavity, the other traps a small pocket of air against the roof of the mouth. We’ll call these ‘lip clicks’ and ‘tongue clicks’. Scroll down to explore each type separately.
"http://australianlinguistics.com/airstream-mechanisms/velari...
There is also glottalic airflow: Using the larynx to create an airstream. The larynx can bob up and down (you’ll have noticed this when you swallow). With a sealed oral cavity, bobbing the larynx down lowers air pressure and sucks air in. Sounds made this way are called ‘implosives’. Bobbing the larynx upwards increases air pressure and forces air out. Sounds made this way are called ‘ejectives’.
No myth buster needed, we can do that stuff with our mouth. Learning Sanskrit is said to be structured in a way that we learn all the humanly possible pronounciations (i doubt that it really is fully complete).
A good introduction to phonetics is "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" by J.C. Catford. Totally recommended. Getting an understanding of how we use voice was really enlightening.
No, you suck with your cheeks only, like you do when drinking from a straw.
When you exhale you might get second hand smoke through your nose or if you're in a place with bad ventilation.
Nicotine itself is a deadly poison. MSDS: https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/96314.htm
"May be fatal if absorbed through the skin"
https://www.fishersci.com/shop/msdsproxy?productName=O172850...
...also for reference caffeine seems to be more than an order of magnitude more toxic than pure ethyl alcohol by weight.
But if you're sensitive to nicotine this will get you high in a jiffy. If you like cold sweats, nausea and dizziness, that is... don't judge me.
Like GP, this only happens a couple times a year, mostly associated with high stress.
And fwiw even "sipping" cigars causes oral cancer. Don't smoke, kids.
So I'm not a smoker, but this is the second time I read/hear something like this. It almost sounds like you are saying that you can keep from inhaling the smoke into your lungs. I don't really buy that. If you inhale, my intuition tells me that it is going straight to your lungs no mater what.
Any smokers want to chime in?
feel that suction? that's the action that pulls smoke through a cigar. Your mouth acts as a sort of lung.
It is akin to taking some water into your mouth through a straw and then spitting it out without swallowing.
A lot of cigars have heavy amounts of nicotine to make up for the fact that most cigar smokers (that I know) do not inhale.
Same fore pipe smokers usually.
As for the technique it's quite easy. Inhale, keep it in your mouth for as long as you please then exhale. Swallowing is a conscious effort so you can easily avoid it. Not that this won't cause you health issues though, from mouth cancers to poorly teeth health and what not.
Smoking causes permanent damage, but spreading misinformation about "the damage already being done" is really unhelpful.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.20118877v...