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5 Health Benefits of Smoking
• Who says smoking cigarettes is so bad ... well, aside from the World
Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and every medical board and
association on the face of the Earth?
• But should smokers be fortunate enough to dodge all that cancer,
heart disease, emphysema and the like, they will be uniquely
protected — for reasons unexplained by science — against a handful
of diseases and afflictions.
• Call it a silver lining in their otherwise blackened lungs. Although
long-term smoking is largely a ticket to early death, here are (gulp)
five possible benefits from smoking. Breathe deep.
Surprising
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1. Smoking lowers risk of knee-replacement
surgery
• While smokers might go broke buying a pack of cigarettes, they can
at least save money by avoiding knee-replacement surgery.
Surprising results from a new study have revealed that men who
smoke had less risk of undergoing total joint replacement surgery
than those who never smoked.
• The study, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, appears in
the July issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism. What could be
the connection? Knee-replacement surgery was more common
among joggers and the obese; smokers rarely jog, and they are less
likely to be morbidly obese.
• After controlling for age, weight and exercise, the researchers were
at a loss to explain the apparent, albeit slight protective effects of
smoking for osteoporosis. It could be that the nicotine in tobacco
helps prevent cartilage and joint deterioration.
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2. Smoking lowers risk of Parkinson's
disease
• Numerous studies have identified the uncanny inverse relationship
between smoking and Parkinson's disease. Long-term smokers are
somehow protected against Parkinson's, and it's not because
smokers die of other things earlier. [10 Easy Paths to Self-Destruction
]
• The most recent, well-conducted study was published in a March
2010 issue of the journal Neurology. Far from determining a cause for
the protective effect, these researchers found that the number of
years spent smoking, more so than the number of cigarettes smoked
daily, mattered more for a stronger protective effect.
• Harvard researchers were among the first to provide convincing
evidence that smokers were less likely to develop Parkinson's. In a
study published in Neurology in March 2007, these researchers found
the protective effect wanes after smokers quit. And they concluded, in
their special scientific way, that they didn't have a clue as to why.
Various
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3. Smoking lowers risk of obesity
• Smoking — and, in particular, the nicotine in tobacco smoke — is an
appetite suppressant. This has been known for centuries, dating back to
indigenous cultures in America in the pre-Columbus era. Tobacco
companies caught on by the 1920s and began targeting women with the
lure that smoking would make them thinner.
• A study published in the July 2011 issue of the journal Physiology &
Behavior, in fact, is one of many stating that the inevitable weight gain upon
quitting smoking is a major barrier in getting people to stop, second only to
addiction.
• The relationship between smoking and weight control is complex: Nicotine
itself acts as both a stimulant and appetite suppressant; and the act of
smoking triggers behavior modification that prompts smokers to snack less.
Smoking also might make food less tasty for some smokers, further curbing
appetite. As an appetite suppressant, nicotine appears to act on a part of
the brain called the hypothalamus, at least in mice, as revealed in a study
by Yale researchers published in the June 10, 2011, issue of the journal
Science.
details
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4. Smoking lowers risk of death after some
heart attacks
• Compared with non-smokers,
smokers who have had heart attacks
seem to have lower mortality rates
and more favorable responses to
two kinds of therapy to remove
plaque from their arteries: fibrinolytic
therapy, which is basically
medication; and angioplasty, which
removes the plaque by inserting
balloons or stents into the arteries.
• There's a catch, though. The
reason why smokers have heart
attacks is that smoke scars the
arteries, allowing fat and plaque to
build up in the first place.
8. 5. Smoking helps the heart drug clopidogrel
work better
• Clopidogrel is a drug used to inhibit blood clots for those patients
suffering from coronary artery disease and other circulatory
diseasesleading to strokes and heart attacks. Smoking seems to help
clopidogrel do its job better.
• A study by Korean researchers in the October 2010 issue of the
journal Thrombosis Research builds upon work by Harvard
researchers published in 2009 that demonstrates the benefit of
smoking at least 10 cigarettes a day. It seems that something in
cigarette smoke activates certain proteins called cytochromes, which
convert clopidogrel into a more active state.
• Again, no respectable doctor is encouraging patients to start smoking
to get the most out of clopidogrel. But this and the other four
"benefits" of smoking reveal how tobacco — perhaps not unlike other
potentially toxic plants — might contain certain chemicals of real
therapeutic value.
• Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books "Bad Medicine" and
"Food At Work."
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