Tobacco.org

Men’s Lost Decade: How Smoke and Cholesterol Shorten Life Span 

Men who smoke and let fat clog their arteries die a decade earlier than those who don’t.

Scientists looking for a connection between life expectancy and cardiovascular risk factors combed through the Whitehall study, a survey of 19,019 male civil servants that started in London in the late 1960s.

They found that those who had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoked in middle age died about 10 years earlier than the others after reaching age 50. The findings are published in the latest edition of the British Medical Journal. The reduction in life expectancy was even greater when the researchers factored in body mass index and diabetes.

“Our results provide support for the public health policies aimed at achieving modest changes in major risk factors throughout the population to achieve improvements in life expectancy,” wrote the authors, led by Robert Clarke of the University of Oxford.

In the study, the researchers found smoking shortened life by about six years

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• Unhealthy men 'may lose 10 years' 

Middle-aged male smokers with high blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels face dying about 10 years before healthier counterparts, a study warns.

The UK study looked at more than 19,000 civil servants aged 40-69 and traced what happened to them 38 years later.

The Oxford study, in the British Medical Journal, said men with these three risk factors could expect a 10-year shorter life from 50 years of age.

The British Heart Foundation said over 40s should have a heart health check.

The study was set up in 1967-70 at the peak of the vascular disease epidemic in the UK.

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No drinking or smoking, but she liked her bacon: World's oldest known person dies at age 115  

Although she liked her bacon crispy and her chicken fried, she never drank, smoked or fooled around, Gertrude Baines once said, describing a life that lasted an astonishing 115 years and earned her the title of oldest person on the planet.

It was a title Baines quietly relinquished Friday when she died in her sleep at Western Convalescent Hospital, her home since she gave up living alone at age 107 after breaking a hip.

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100-year-old celebrates her birthday by smoking 170,000th cigarette  

Winne Langley celebrated her 100th birthday the best way she knows how - smoking

An iron-lunged pensioner has celebrated her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigerette from a candle on her birthday cake.

Winnie Langley started smoking only days after the First World War broke out in June 1914 when she was just seven-years-old - and has got through five a day ever since. She has no intention of quitting, even after the nationwide ban forced tobacco-lovers outside.

Speaking at her 100th birthday party Winnie said: "I have smoked ever since infant school and I have never thought about quitting. . . .

Despite the numerous health warnings, Mrs Langley insists she's never suffered because of the habit as she "has never inhaled".

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102-year-old woman says: 'I'm giving up my cigarettes...after 95 years!'  

She lit her first cigarette as the lights were going out over Europe at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Since then she has reached for her trusty Player's Navy Blue (or, latterly, Embassy) through the ups and downs of all the following decades.

Until now. At the astonishing age of 102, Winne Langley has kicked the habit after 95 years because she 'didn't fancy it any more'.

Mrs Langley, who would share cigarettes with her friends at infant school, reckons she hasn't contracted cancer because she does not inhale. . . .

Since her first puff in 1914, Mrs Langley averaged five cigarettes a day, giving a total of more than 170,000 in her lifetime.

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KOMAR: Nothing to Get Scared About / Living Will Gives Me Peace of Mind 

I am 82 years old, have had a wonderful life and, although there are things I would still like to accomplish, I am not interested in merely extending my life via a much-diminished existence. As a result of smoking for many years, I have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. It is a debilitating disease. I can't walk very far without getting out of breath.

And I have a living will.

My disease is not curable, and it's only going to get worse, so several decades ago I drew up a document specifying exactly what medical care I do, and do not, want in my final days. . . .

The proposed health reform legislation would provide reimbursement for seniors to review their living wills every five years, which seems sensible.

Based on experiences during my last hospitalization for COPD, I revised my living in 2004 to specify that I do not want to be treated with a breathing tube, should I have another crisis. In research I did on intubation, I learned that inserting a breathing tube is a difficult and traumatic procedure from which I would anticipate a long and difficult recovery that at best would leave me even more incapacitated than I am now. For me, it isn't worth it. Someone else in my condition might well make a different choice, but this is the choice I have put in my living will for my doctors and family to follow. . . .

We all have to die someday. But unlike billions of people who lived before us, we have a few choices regarding our final days. Why would we not exercise them?

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Smoking, High Blood Pressure And Diabetes In Mid-life Can Lead To Dementia 

Middle aged people who smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes are far more likely to develop dementia in later life, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

People should consider modifying their lifestyle in mid-life to avoid developing dementia, claims the US research.

Dementia is a growing public health problem affecting older people in developed countries. In the US, where the research took place, estimates show that one in six people older than 70 have dementia. Estimates are that the number of people with dementia will grow threefold by 2050, compared with 2000.

Previous studies have shown that the presence of cardiovascular risk factors including high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and smoking increase the risk of developing subsequent dementia, but have often failed to show the relationship.

Researchers from the universities of Minnesota, North Carolina and John Hopkins and the University of Mississippi Medical Center studied more than 11,000 people aged 46-70 who were participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study in 1990-92.

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• “We need something for people to die,” British tobacco industry  

A 1978 document, recently made known, revealed the sleight used during that time by the tobacco industry of the United Kingdom in order to overcome the crisis in the sector before evidence that cigarettes were harmful: "We need something for people to die," said the report.

According to the consulting agency Campbell-Johnson for the British Association of Tobacco (BAT), tobacco consumption was functional for the Government, due to the fact that cancer and other illnesses associated to cigarettes limited "the number of dependent elderly that the economy must maintain."

The document's author recognizes that "obviously" those arguments "cannot be used publicly," but he insists: "with a general increase in life expectancy, we need something for people to die. In replacement of the effects of war, poverty, and hunger, cancer, considered the illness of rich and developed countries, has a role to play."

This idea, considered a "psychological factor in order to continue the taste people have of smoking as something pleasant, although it may be a dangerous habit, should not be under valuated," the document continued. . . .

One of the actions is to promote a code of conduct among smokers that, if followed, "would assure they wouldn't be accused by non-smokers of arrogantly assuming the right to contaminate the air around them."

"Their tone has to be frank and positive," and one of the objectives must be to "restore the smoker's image as an outgoing and sociable person, and not neurotic, smelly, and marginal as the non-smokers think," concluded the report.

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More Evidence Healthy Living Brings Long Life  

People who adopt four healthy behaviors -- never smoking, regular exercise, eating well and maintaining a healthy weight -- can dramatically reduce their likelihood for chronic disease and an early death, a new study confirms.

On average, healthy living may cut your odds for heart disease, cancer and diabetes by about 80 percent, the researchers said.

"We're talking about relatively straightforward behaviors that pretty much everyone knows about already," said study author Dr. Earl S. Ford, a medical officer with the U.S. Public Health Service and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But there's unfortunately a gap between people realizing what's good for them and doing what they might want to do."

"We're showing that for a very wide range of diseases -- not just one chronic disease, but many -- these few behaviors really do have a major impact on prevention," Ford said.

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KATZ: Life and Death, Knowledge and Power: Why Knowing What Matters Is Not What's the Matter ($$) 

For a span of decades prior to 1993, when asked what is the leading cause of death in the United States, there was only one reasonable answer—heart disease. The answers for the second, third, and fourth leading causes were similarly circumscribed: cancer, stroke, and diabetes. But in that year, McGinnis and Foege1 refashioned our understanding and forever changed these answers with the publication of their seminal article, "Actual Causes of Death in the United States." As of 1993, the leading cause of death in the United States became tobacco use.

McGinnis and Foege1 looked beyond the diseases that are proximal causes of death to the causes of those diseases, the root causes of death. They concluded that half of the annual mortality toll in this country—roughly a million deaths—was premature. These deaths could be prevented, or more accurately, deferred, with the modification of just 10 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Healthy Living Is the Best Revenge 

Background Our objective was to describe the reduction in relative risk of developing major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer associated with 4 healthy lifestyle factors among German adults. . . .

Conclusion Adhering to 4 simple healthy lifestyle factors can have a strong impact on the prevention of chronic diseases.

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Four Golden Rules Can Help Reduce Your Chances Of Chronic Disease by 78%  

Four simple lifestyle measures - not taking up smoking, keeping slim, eating a healthy diet and regular exercise - together reduce the risk of deadly chronic diseases by up to 78%, a study has shown.

Researchers based the finding on results from a major public health investigation involving more than 23,500 adults aged 35 to 65.

They concluded the three chronic conditions that claim the most lives, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, can largely be prevented by healthy living.

Participants answered questions about diet, smoking, exercise, weight and height, social background and state of health. . . .

The research, from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, appears today in the journal Archives Of Internal Medicine.

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Elderly Couple Starts Fire While "Doing the Nasty"  

A retired firefighter and his wife nearly burned their Miami home to the ground in a fast-moving fire they acidentally started while naked in bed, fire officials said. . . .

Fire Department spokesman Lt. Ignatius Carroll said the couple "were spending some quality time with each other" when a lit cigarette was dropped under their bed shortly before 9 a.m. in their apartment complex in the 1400 block of Northwest 19th Street. "She didn't realize that happened until they started seeing flames and smoke coming up from under their bed," Carroll said. "They completely came out with nothing on, people had to give them something to cover up with." Lowell's wife, Jolie, is wheelchair-bound and was pretty upset about the couple not getting a chance to spark their own fire. "It was my cigarette. We were getting ready to do the nasty so that's why," she said. "You kind of forget about the cigarette."

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Cigarette To Blame For Fire That Destroyed Apt. 

A South Florida couple has lost their home after a fire ripped through their apartment early Tuesday morning in Miami.

Joli and Larry Lowell were jolted awake by the smoke and flames inside their apartment at 1441 NW 19th Street. Lt. Iggy Carroll with the Miami Fire Department says it was caused by a lit cigarette. . . .

Larry Lowell, who is a retired firefighter, says the two were in bed when the fire erupted shortly before 9:00 a.m.

"We were just falling asleep, next thing you know the bed was on fire. I've never seen a bed burn that fast," explained Larry.

Joli says she fell asleep with a cigarette and that's what caused the blaze. . . .

Firefighters also rescued a cat and a dog. . . .

Joli was recently released from the hospital after a 7 month stay after recovering from a heart attack, pneumonia and a collapsed lung. She says she wasn't even supposed to be smoking but after this incident, she will definitely quit.

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Miami apartment gutted in fire caused by cigarette 

An early morning blaze caused by a dropped cigarette gutted a Miami apartment on Tuesday.

The couple inside, Larry and Joli Lowell, escaped the fire by crawling out of Apt. 122 at the Creek Club Apartments, 1441 NW 19th St. . . .

Joli Lowell told fire officials she dropped her cigarette in the bedroom, sparking the blaze. She uses a walker and wheelchair to get around, Carroll said.

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