do you think the dangers of smoking are over hyped?

If you smoke every day you will die of some form of cancer (typically lung, throat or mouth cancer). That is a fact.

/thread.

The higher end risks such as lung cancer are certainly over-hyped.



http://www.forestonline.org/info/smoking-and-health/

Only a neurotic would consider those odds truly threatening; you should be far more concerned with the risks associated with red meats and the pollution fumes of metropolitan areas. As a smoker I can say I'm far more concerned with the likes of gum and eye damage.

Not fact- it will severely increase your chances of developing some form of cancer* I know old people that smoked and drank for years and they have made it to their 80's without cancer.

16% chance of lung cancer is pretty bad tbh

Red meat has never been shown to have anything more than a correlational link to morbidity,

Yes. The average smoker smokes a whole packet (twenty cigarettes) a day.

If you smoke every day you will die of some form of cancer (typically lung, throat or mouth cancer). That is a fact.

/thread.

Just as much is true for smoking.



You do a good job of regurgitating what your caregivers and the media have drummed into you, but unfortunately it's total balls. All that is needed to debunk your position is the following BBC article, which cites a study taking place over three decades and involving hundreds of thousands of participants. Read next to the figures I have provided, you will find that red meats pose at best an equal and at worst a much greater level of risk than smoking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17345967

i personally do think so, i did research into it. But of course it depends on how many you smoke a day, light smoking (5 a day) is ok.

"The researchers suggested that saturated fat from red meat may be behind the increased heart risk and the sodium used in processed meats may "increase cardiovascular disease risk through its effect on blood pressure".

So it clearly states in the very article you posted itself, without even needing to look at the study, that the link to morbidity is most probably down to increased calories from high fat content, hypertension risk from sodium etc - neither of which point to any intrinsic danger of red meat itself. So it's entirely possible to incorporate red meat into a calorie controlled, overall healthy diet, resulting in no increased risk to the person.

What it says is that certain aspects of red meat, such as saturated fat and sodium inevitably used in processed meats, pose a health risk. You haven't produced evidence showing that these things - and therefore the risks they are shown to have - are not universal and therefore 'intrinsic' to unprocessed and processed red meats. The study doesn't say anything about this, and I imagine it would affect the results, so I assume that they are.

Nowhere have I said that it isn't possible to do incorporate red meats into a healthy diet, however. What I have said is that current trends in red meat consumption pose a health risk at best equal to and at worst greater than the risks posed by cigarettes to the average smoker, and that (reiterating what you were originally responding to in the first place) smoking receives an undue amount of attention and fear by comparison to red meats.

'They said that during the study period, adding an extra portion of unprocessed red meat to someone's daily diet would increase the risk of death by 13%, of fatal cardiovascular disease by 18% and of cancer mortality by 10%. The figures for processed meat were higher, 20% for overall mortality, 21% for death from heart problems and 16% for cancer mortality.'

'According to Professor Sir Richard Doll (the man who first discovered a correlation between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s) research suggests that if you start smoking as a teenager and quit aged 30, the risk of developing lung cancer is 2 per cent; give up at 50 and the risk goes up to 8 per cent; give up at 70 (by which time you have been smoking for more than 50 years) and the risk rises to 16 per cent.'



Let's try not to get into ad hominem here and just stick to facts, if we both feel capable. We both know that I never said that smoking does not increase your risk of morbidity 'whatsoever'; let's also try and stick to what's actually been said instead of constructing an easier argument to attack. What I have argued is that the risk of contracting lung cancer from smoking is nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be. So far I have provided sources and figures to back up my argument, which remain untouched by you; you have managed only to produce one questionable argument about the intrinsic nature of the risks associated with red meats, rebuttals of arguments that haven't been made and bombastic dismissals of my main argument without ever having properly engaged with it.

It's not as addictive as people think it is. A lot of people seem to think that a couple of cigarettes a week is definitely going to lead to an addiction but there are so many people who causally smoke without feeling the need to smoke every day.

If you smoke every day you will die of some form of cancer (typically lung, throat or mouth cancer). That is a fact.

/thread.

If you smoke every day you will die of some form of cancer (typically lung, throat or mouth cancer). That is a fact.

/thread.

chances are that you will develop a disease as a consequence of your smoking (there's LOADS of research to back this up)

The people who claim to believe that they are over-hyped are usually the people who don't want to accept the harm that they are doing to themselves..

Passive smoking is every bit as deadly as first hand smoking.

Well I had a brief skim of the actual data - your figures don't prove your point whatsoever unfortunately, so just because you posted a study doesn't mean anything. The BBC article misrepresented the study somewhat (surprise surprise), nowhere in the actual data does it say anything about "just adding one portion of red meat" - it was a long term cohort study done over 3 decades following groups who ate generally low amount of red meat and groups who ate generally high amounts. And to further the previous point, an excerpt from the study:

"Men and women with higher intake of red meat were less likely to be physically active and were more likely to be current smokers, to drink alcohol, and to have a higher body mass index (Table 1). In addition, a higher red meat intake was associated with a higher intake of total energy but lower intakes of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Unprocessed and processed red meat consumption was moderately correlated (r = 0.40 in the HPFS and 0.37 in the NHS)."

So meat eaters are less active, eat more calories and are fatter, smoke and drink more, eat less fibrous vegetables and fruits. No **** they die more. As expected, the study proves jack **** about intrinsic danger of red meat. None of the above factors have anything to do with red meat itself. So like I said you can easily incorporate red meat into an otherwise healthy lifestyle and it will not detract from long term health. The same is impossible with smoking - if you keep all other factors the same and add in cigarette smoking, your risk of poor health WILL increase at least somewhat. So how is red meat in and of itself worse for you than smoking?.

You also are only focusing on lung cancer, why? The thread title clearly refers to general dangers of smoking. What about oropharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophagal cancers among several others, emphysema and chronic bronchitis, resp. tract infections, vascular damage and CVD, deterioration of dental/periodontal health, risk to unborn babies, etc etc. No, smoking doesn't = dying from lung cancer, only a moron would claim that. But it's overall effect on a range of health markers, and it's impact on either quality or length of life or both, has not really been exaggerated by any medical authority. Some uneducated people do take things out of context, but the advice given out by doctors on the issue is pretty sound