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Rare "Healthy" Smokers Lungs Explained
Bruce66423 writes: New research suggests that a portion of the population suffers few problems from smoking because their genes enable the smoke's effects to be overcome. The Medical Research Council reports: "The new findings, which used the first analyses of genetic data from participants in UK Biobank, may one day help scientists develop better treatments for diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a collection of life-threatening lung disorders affecting almost one million people in the UK. The findings could also help improve interventions aimed at helping smokers to give up."
"By comparing smokers and non-smokers as well as those with the disease and without they discovered sections of our DNA that reduce the risk of COPD.
So smokers with "good genes" had a lower risk of COPD than those with "bad genes"."
Top notch reporting, everyone. Solid work.
That is an oversimplification. First of all where I live relatively few places ban e-cigs, the few that do ban them is more about people not wanting cloaks of smoke, or nicotine steam, sprewed on them.
But to be honest you do not know what is in the vaps. Are they using the "safe" liquids you can buy at the store, or did they mix their own and have other "unsafe" chemicals in them. You are free to smoke, you are not free to poison me.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Marijuana is not at all harmful like cigarettes. Inhaling any smoke is not good for you, however, the main difference is that marijuana is just a dried out plant which is basically harmless.
Commercial tobacco, by comparison, is not just a plant but it is loaded with a plethora of toxic chemicals - including ammonia, DDT, arsenic, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide - just to name a few. More here.
Marijuana can also have health benefits. I have never heard of medicinal tobacco.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
I do. I do indeed. I love it. On very, very, rare occasions you can find me smoking a pipe that doesn't contain marijuana. I inhale that too.
I love the burst of cigar smoke in my lungs. It doesn't make me cough or anything and it tastes great. I used to like a fine cigar with rum and would sometimes dip the end in my rum (not the lit end, silly goose). Then I realized I was wasting good rum and ruining a cigar that I'd spent like $10+ on, sometimes much more than that.
I live quite a bit north of there but there's a tobacco store in Farmington, Maine. It's right off Route 2 - nice place. And they have a nice, humidity controlled, cigar section. Even better is when I can make it down to their store in Augusta - they have a walk-in humidor. It is as awesome as it sounds. I've actually considered turning a room in my house into one but I'm just not that picky.
I do have a portable humidor and it's pretty good sized. I take it with me when I travel - it's with me right now. I've decided to stay in Buffalo another night but I have to change rooms as it seems this room is promised to a couple who have some sort of sentimental attachment to this room. I am probably going to stay another night as well - I've got my reasoning.
But, yes, yes I do inhale cigar smoke. I know of some who do not. I don't really understand that. That would be like eating fat-free ice cream or drinking alcohol-free beer or decaffeinated coffee.
As an aside (like that's ever bothered me before) the Cubans do make a good cigar but I really don't rank it up there with the 'best' - at least not those that I've tried. No, I've smoked them but that was just because they were illegal and then because I could. It was a matter of the experience and not the quality. They're not bad, not by any means, but they're not the best. I'm not sure if I could say what I think is the best (and often price is secondary, some of the more expensive taste like ass and you get more consistency with a major commercial label) but I can firmly assert that it is not any specific Cuban that I'm aware of. Too bad, too. I like Cuba. I wish I liked their cigars more.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
> Marijuana is not at all harmful like cigarettes
Right. It's harmful like marijuana, which clearly causes no parallel effects to cigarettes like elevated pulse, vasoconstriction, altered state of consciosness, and has no chance of causing addiction or of introducing naturally carcinogenic chemicals to your mouth and other respiratory passages.
That belief is strange, because it causes _all_ of those according to the reliable medical research. It's even stranger when surveys of the purity of street grade consistently show adulteration with different filler substances and mood-altering substances: a great deal of street grade marijuna is very poor quality, may be pesticide or herbicide contaminated, and is very occasionally still laced with PCP in the US. Moreover, tobacco and nicotine are still used medicinally, and even as an effective toothpaste in some parts of the world.
It's important to keep the scale of risk and benefit in mind for both, but to assert that one is completely harmless and the other completely useless midically is to ignore history and well-executed research on both.
Also I can not believe that all the listed ingredients are in a single cigarette.
Why not? It's widely documented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If you dry out tobacco for smoking, the hippies will call it vile poison and try to have it banned.
If you dry out marijuana for smoking, the hippies will call it a miracle-cure-all medicine and try to have it legalized.
Silly hippies.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And how would I know when I enter a restaurant that half way through my meal the person in the table next to mine is not going to start spewing unknown chemicals in my direction?
They could be required to post a sign on the entrance that states whether it is a smoking, or non-smoking establishment. By the tobacco stench you would probably notice before opening the door more than halfway. Or the ashtrays on the tables might be a clue.
I quit smoking over a decade ago, but I feel there should be places for smokers to do their thing. I prefer to not be around it, but I'm not a militant non-smoker either. Taxes on tobacco does a lot of good. And smokers tend to be less costly on the medical system as well.
Not sure how it works in the States, but the grounding for the EU-wide ban in 2007 was industrial health and safety.
It was intended to protect the establishment's employeees, not people subjected to smoke in their face while dining. That latter effect is just a bonus.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Listen to drinky. Nicotine is a really pretty great medicinal. It was Adderall before there was Big Pharma, and it's not a fluke that Native Americans made it a sacrament. The main problem with smoking is not the drug, but the delivery system.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you're going to ban things that "pollute the common air" based on fear, misinformation, and paranoia I vote we ban scented candles and perfumes.
Scented candles fill the air with an mix of thousands of unknown chemicals. Worse, the FDA has not evaluated their safety! I don't care how much of an idiot you look like with your miniature fires.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Oh this is certainly the case in many places. Cancer is a perfect example. It often requires several genetic mutations for a normal cell to become cancerous, partially because there are many safegaurds against it.
Each individual starts at a random point closer or further away from any particular cancerous state, and in fact, from all of them individually, and this is true not just for cancer but for all manner of subtle variation.
Life is a big game of bet hedging. You toss 100 people naked in the cold, and they will not all die at the same time. Take 100 and toss them in the heat, and you will find the same. Some will survive longer without water, some without food. Its all thousands of subtle variations. Some will be better at developing immunity to flu, some will be better at small pox. If this wasn't true, then we would all be wiped out. Just look at the bannana if you want to know the weakness of monoculture. We don't even eat the same ones our parents did.
Did you know that they have already found drugs that failed in clinical trials, no better than placebo for the general population, but were found to work rather effectively for individuals who had particular genetic variations?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
And do you block all children from entering, or atleast the teenagers coming to eat with friends?
Way to move the goal post. Regardless, I would think it would depend on the legal age for smoking, wouldn't it? Hell, bars already deal with this. If someone's under 21, they have to be accompanied by their guardian in most places. There are tobacco bars as well. Have smoking restaurants follow the same policy.
They contain,
food grade vegetable glycerin
food grade propylene glycol
nicotine
food grade Flavoring agents
Some people will use lab grade which just designates the purity of the substance.
Many point to the flavoring agents as the unknown in the mix. Most are simple essential oils extracted from the plant to provide flavoring. For example, a cool mint e-cig juice will contain a spearmint essential oil.
In most cases, finding out what is in the juice is as simple as reading the list of ingredients on the bottle or the makers website.
All of the ones I have seen stick to stuff that is consumed by people regularly. They dont want the risks of using something that is not food safe.
a great deal of street grade marijuna is very poor quality, may be pesticide or herbicide contaminated, and is very occasionally still laced with PCP in the US
You lie. Not only is this not happening, your little tale doesn't even pass the smell test. Dealers selling bad marijuana are not lacing/spiking it with PCP. The dealers are in this to make money and buying PCP so they can sprinkle on their weed seems like a bad story from a 1982 DARE program speech. What's next, the kid who took LSD and thought he could fly?
How about this instead: a great deal of street grade marijuana is sold because marijuana sells itself. Nothing else needs to be added.
> surveys of the purity of street grade consistently show adulteration with different filler substances and mood-altering substances
Absolutely false.
>very occasionally still laced with PCP in the US
Also an urban myth. There is absolutely no benefit for a dealer to buy a more expensive drug to add to marijuana, given that they would lose money if they didn't outright charge far above street price, and would at that point have to disclose some sort of reasoning. Secondly, nobody buying weed who got something with "laced with PCP" would ever return as a customer (unless they were looking for that to begin with), so it's self defeating in that right as well.
"Perl is my favorite... It's like wiping your ass with unix." - Lord Ender
Also a problem is that smokers tend to saturate their system completely with the insecticide toxins (nicotine is an insecticide that plants naturally evolved). Traditional tobacco and medicinal users smoke occasionally.
That 'rummy' smell of a pickled alcoholic is similar to the saturated nicotine smell of a cigarette addict.
Spare me. "Medical marijuana" is in almost all cases nothing more than a fig leaf to cover people who want to get high
Tell that to the families with children with epilepsy being successfully treated for seizures and other symptoms using cannabis oil. Your information is extremely prejudiced, and out of date. There are many people with debilitating diseases and conditions that cannabis can provide treatment or relief from.
"Perl is my favorite... It's like wiping your ass with unix." - Lord Ender
There is so much fail in this I don't even know where to start.
Marijuana has far more positive health effects than negative. In fact THC the chemical that gets you "high" is anti carcinogenic and has proven cancer fighting effects http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
"Purity" of street level product. Oy vey what a statement. You realize your fruits and vegetables have pesticides and herbicides on them as well right? Not to mention all of the nutrient "uptake" from fertilizers is in that plant. You are what you eat, includes plants as well. As for "purity" of the THC content, you either have cheap herb or dank green. Even a plant you grow yourself will have varying quality of THC. In the same way that your vegetables grown in the back yard won't have 100% the same nutritional facts as something grown on a properly fertilized farm.
Finally, PCP laced marijuana? Are you kidding me? Why would any dealer bother lacing weed with PCP? You know PCP is insanely more expensive than marijuana right? Why would a dealer undercut his own prices lacing it with a drug as ridiculous as PCP? Stop quoting DARE literature from 1982.
Want to know a secret about life long tobacco smokers? They're most likely cannabis smokers as well (that anti-carcinogenic effect).
Medical marijuana has a lot of promise as pain management.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) doesn't work all that well and can kill your liver if you have a relatively mild overdose.
Ibuprofin and NSAIDs don't work all that well for severe pain and also can have nasty side effects like stomach ulceration.
Opiates do work well, even for severe pain, but they have lots of very nasty side effects, lose effectiveness, and become addictive. These are really horrible drugs.
Humanity is crying out for better painkillers, and marijuana, yes, medical marijuana, has promise there. Or do you not consider management of severe chronic pain a valid medical reason?
And there are not a "tiny number" of people with chronic pain. I'd argue ALL the other drugs are as bad or worse than marijuana for that application.
--PM
S'not a problem. I'm not a huge fan of moderation and I have no idea how I have excellent karma as I am usually so far off topic that it's become a habit. ;)
I'd guess the average cigar that I smoke would be about $10 and I smoke as many as five a day on an average day. It's costly but worth it. What confuses me is those people who'd smoke them and not inhale. I mean, yeah, I did that first but I learned better ways. That's like having a 1/2 gram of crack/day addiction and just lighting it on fire for the smell! Absurd!
Anyhow, I suspect I've annoyed someone. They'll get tired eventually. Every couple of days someone comes along and marks me off-topic. Which is true, and I don't mind at all, so there's no need to waste mod points on me in either direction. Quite often someone comes along and 'fixes' it. I could just post with my karma bonus but where's the fun in that?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Tell that to the families with children with epilepsy being successfully treated for seizures and other symptoms using cannabis oil.
Just as soon as you provide adequate evidence in the form of unambiguous medical studies confirming its effectiveness for the conditions. Right now the evidence for cannibidiol is largely anecdotal and the effectiveness or lack thereof is unclear.
Even if it does work it doesn't follow that because a demonstrably small number of people get genuine medical relief I'm supposed to believe that everybody people seeking marijuana are actually doing so for legitimate medical reasons. You must be either high yourself or dumb if you believe that. I had a dispensary open up (briefly) right next door to my office about 3 years ago. I assure you that NOBODY (or near as makes no difference) that was showing up was the slightest bit ill. These were people looking to get high. The medical exemption was largely an effort for most people to make an end run around federal and state laws against the substance so they could get high. Nothing more.
Your information is extremely prejudiced, and out of date.
Prejudiced? Hardly. I don't give a shit at all if people want to smoke weed recreationally. I just want them to be honest about it and stop pretending that it has anything to do with medicine for all but a tiny handful of cases.
There are many people with debilitating diseases and conditions that cannabis can provide treatment or relief from.
"Many"? Define many. I'll concur that the number is greater than zero. However the real number is a LOT less than the number seeking the product through. My wife is a physician and has been asked plenty of times for a prescription for marijuana by someone with no relevant medical condition.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A genetic test that defines who can smoke an who can't, great.
Oh, much, much, more interesting: a genetic variation that allows certain people to maintain the function of a huge and delicate sponge of gas-exchange membrane despite heavy dosing with a grab bag of carcinogens, incomplete organic combustion products, and all sorts of unpleasantness.
The ability to smoke without consequence is peanuts compared to some of the possible applications of working out how that effect is created.
I do smoke a lot of 'em so, yeah, they're probably pretty tough. I still managed to run a 5k and place first for my age group and 3rd over all this summer. The last batch of Cubans I got really had a lot of very distinct differences between them, hard to describe but inconsistent. I tend to get most of mine from across the border - in Canada. They are much better (and a lot less expensive) than if you go to Cuba (of course) though I've only been twice.
It's really hard to explain the flavor. They are definitely distinct. I suspect my preference is because I've been used to other variations for most of my adult life. It probably doesn't help that I smoked cigarettes for a number of years.
Anyhow, it's not like I sit there and smoke a whole cigar and inhale the entire thing at one time. I'll light it, smoke some, forget it's going, notice it's out and still in my mouth (or an ashtray) an relight it and then chuck it away and grab a new one 'cause they get kind of gross after you relight them a few times. If I had to guess an average then I'd say that I might be smoking 1/2 to 2/3. Rough estimate, of course. I kind of like the feel and I'm sure I'm addicted as all hell though I don't seem to mind too much when I stop smoking for a while? Maybe the cravings don't bother me too much as I've dealt with other addictions in the past.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Marijuana has been illegal in all states until recently, and is still illegal at the Federal level. Under those circumstances, it's going to be hard to run double-blind studies. The stuff appears to provide some benefits for some people.
The medicinal uses are for muscle spasms, chronic pain, to suppress nausea in people undergoing chemotherapy, as an appetite enhancer for people with HIV, and (from what I've heard) glaucoma and epilepsy. None of these are necessarily going to be apparent in people on the sidewalk near your office.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Before marijuana can be treated like any other drug, the Feds need to take it off Schedule I, where it very definitely doesn't belong.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Do you have any idea how much nicotine S C Wright, J Zhong, H Zheng and J W Larrick had to give to lab rats to get to a level where apoptosis was sufficiently inhibited to promote tumor growth? And did you know that the tumors already had to be caused by something else, that wasn't nicotine?
You think there are no pharmaceuticals that are poisons? Don't be a fool. Shall we list the pharmaceuticals that also inhibit apoptosis? They're using caspase inhibitors right now to treat spinal cord injuries with drugs that have about 100 times more apoptosis inhibition than nicotine.
For that matter, why do we use pesticides on our food? Why do we design special GMOs just so we can use more pesticides on our food?
Don't be so simple-minded. Nicotine at the levels casual users use does not cause cancer. It's the delivery system in smoking that causes cancer. And do you not know that there's arsenic in apples? Will you now start posting anti-apple FUD?
You are welcome on my lawn.