<p>My wife is going on vacation with our daughter soon, and one of my guilty pleasures when I’m alone is to have about one pipe-tobacco cigar a day. (I like Black & Mild, which are not full-size cigars but rather just a bit larger than a cigarette). So I’ll probably have a dozen cigars or so over the next two weeks, and that’s all I will have for the rest of the year. I do inhale.</p>
<p>I know that inhaling smoke of any kind can’t be good for one’s lungs, so I accept the fact that I’m creating an unnecessary health risk. But I also take a risk every time I eat a cheeseburger, drive in the rain, or fail to get enough sleep, and I don’t have a sense of the relative riskiness of these various activities.</p>
<p>My question is, are the dozen cigars a year a big deal or not? I would especially appreciate the opinion of someone with some medical knowledge. Is the occasional cigar better, worse, or about the same as the occasional stiff drink or the occasional fatty meal? Is lung, throat, or mouth cancer any more common in people who *almost *never smoke than in people who *absolutely *never smoke?</p>
<p>I am somewhat familiar with the ins and outs of tobacco use and nicotined addiction. Here’s the short answer: Nicotine is the most addictive substance on earth and the hardest addiction to break. I can give you all the detail you could want, but the explanation centers around the particular receptors in the brain that, by a fluke of nature, the nicotine molecule binds to.</p>
<p>Here’s the way you should look at it. **When you buy and light a mini-cigar, you should assume that you are making a conscious decision to have your life controlled by nicotine addiction all day, every day, for the rest of your life, until it kills you - just like a heroin junkie. **Yes, there is the occasional person who plays russian roulette and doesn’t blow their brains out. The odds with nicotine use are not good. Not good at all.</p>
<p>It took me 38 years to break the addiction. I can’t begin to tell you how dangerous what you are doing is. You have to be certifiabley nuts, in 2011, to start using nicotine.</p>
<p>Your advice perplexes me. I didn’t say, “I’m thinking about taking up smoking. Do you think it’s a good idea?” I said I do smoke on rare occasions and wonder what the relative health risks are.</p>
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<p>I told you. The biggest health risk is that nicotine drug addiction will make those occasions less and less “rare” and then you will smoke all day, ever day, until it kills you.</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. If you don’t think you are a nicotine addict, then prove me wrong. Don’t buy any mini-cigars and don’t smoke for the next month. Should be easy right? You don’t think you are addicted. I bet you can’t do it. </p>
<p>You know why? Because nobody keeps inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco leaves unless they are drug addicts. Think about it. What possible reason could there be for wanting to inhale hot smoke from burning leaves into your lungs? That’s certainly not pleasurable.</p>
<p>I will be clear from the outset that I absolutely HATE cigarettes/cigars/chewing tobacco, etc. I would never tolerate H having a regular habit. HOWEVER, he used to smoke (not that much, but he did before we met), and occasionally he will have a mini-cigar when he plays cards with his friends or when out with friends who smoke. They play weekly, and he joins them maybe 3 times a month. Overall, this probably amounts to 20-30 cigars a year. He works out, runs when his knees allow it, and generally eats well. He is one of the healthiest people I know, and he will be 50 this year. </p>
<p>If you are not worried about addiction problems (since you already smoke occasionally) I would examine your health behavior in other areas (diet, exercise, alcohol, sleep, etc.) rather than getting too worked up about the occasional cigar. On the other hand, if you can’t enjoy them because of your health concerns, then they aren’t really worth it, are they?</p>
<p>My significant other asks me not to smoke, and I don’t, but when she goes out of town, it’s one of the greatest simple pleasures in life to sit down with a pipe or cigar and meditate on the state of things. </p>
<p>Is it bad for me? It’s probably no better for me than not smoking at all (well, there are some benefits of smoking, but I don’t know how dosing affects the negative/positive balance). Even if every time I smoked took a day off my life, I think I’d still do it. There’s something deeply meaningful about smoking to me, although I’m not quite sure how to describe it…</p>
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<p>I can’t think of a single one that doesn’t fall into the category of a “junkie lie”.</p>
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<p>^^What a very well carfted pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo! Care to provide any peer-reviewed articles in reputable medical journals that support your statements?</p>
<p>A simple internet search turns up some leads. I’m not sure how many of these are still current, but several of the links on this site are to reputable (?) sources:</p>
<p>[FORCES</a> - THE EVIDENCE - Therapeutic effects of smoking](<a href=“http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/therap.htm]FORCES”>http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/therap.htm)</p>
<p>Ultimately, I think some of the “common knowledge” or “common sense” or “generally accepted” benefits are real… anyway, it’s been my experience that this is the case. I have found that tobacco tends to reduce my appetite and increase my focus. Whether that’s a “junkie lie” or “pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo”, I’ll leave to your imagination.</p>
<p>It always surprises me when so many seemingly rational people betray hysterically chicken-#$@*ing subconscious personalities. See, now we’re both in the wrong.</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, any “health benefits” are completely irrelvant to my main point: that people smoke because they like smoking, not because it’s good for them. So what if it’s bad? People do bad things all the time… Arguably, there are a lot worse ways to waste a life than by smoking it away.</p>
<p>Instead of looking all over the web (which, as we know, is filled with websites touting helath benefits of everything from sniffing glue to snorting painkillers) I suggest searching here:</p>
<p>[PubMed</a> home](<a href=“http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez]PubMed”>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez)</p>
<p>Smoking is an unnecessary expense.</p>
<p>If you can find one pubmed journal article that details smoking as a positive I will pay you $1k</p>
<p>^ Take a look at these, and you be the one to decide whether you owe me $1,000:</p>
<p>[Smoking</a> duration, intensity, and risk of Parkinson… [Neurology. 2010] - PubMed result](<a href=“Smoking duration, intensity, and risk of Parkinson disease - PubMed”>Smoking duration, intensity, and risk of Parkinson disease - PubMed)
[Impact</a> of smoking on clinical and angiographic res… [Circulation. 2001] - PubMed result](<a href=“Impact of smoking on clinical and angiographic restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention: another smoker's paradox? - PubMed”>Impact of smoking on clinical and angiographic restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention: another smoker's paradox? - PubMed)
[Effects</a> of nicotine on attention and inhibitory co… [Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 2011] - PubMed result](<a href=“Effects of nicotine on attention and inhibitory control in healthy nonsmokers - PubMed”>Effects of nicotine on attention and inhibitory control in healthy nonsmokers - PubMed)</p>
<p>I’ll try to find more if none of these is sufficient. I really hope that if one of these casts tobacco in any kind of positive light, you’ll be an honorable human being and cut me a check.</p>
<p>**CONCLUSIONS:</p>
<p>This large study suggests that long-term smoking is more important than smoking intensity in the smoking-Parkinson disease relationship.**</p>
<p>Honestly, that is a funny study. </p>
<p>The same thing can be achieved via L-Dopa btw. (Parkinsons is a disease of the dopaminergic pathways) So scratch that study as smoking causes far more LT complications than L-dopa or something like Bromocriptine (Another D1 agonist)</p>
<p>I don’t really understand #2</p>
<p>In #3, nicotine is a stimulant and therefore will always enhance focus. Can’t say anybody has ever disputed this. But again, you can achieve the same effect via nicotine gum. You don’t need cigarettes.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people confuse the effect of cigarettes with the effect of nicotine.</p>
<p>Nicotine by itself isn’t really all that bad. It’s just a dopaminergic stimulant. It’s the additives in cigarettes that primarily cause all of the health issues.</p>
<p>^ Hey, you said that if I could find a single study that touted the benefits of smoking, you’d write me a check. Smoking is a stimulant, and as such, smoking has the same positive and negative effects as other stimulants. Smoking is a means of taking in nicotine, and as such, anything positive you can say about nicotine is something positive about smoking.</p>
<p>You can argue that smoking is a stupid way to get the nicotine, but it is a way, and delivers many of the positive benefits thereof (along with lots of problems, too, but I never questioned or implied that smoking wasn’t bad for you).</p>
<p>I even found your article on your site. So now not all the articles I can find through PubMed are acceptable? Anybody seeing a pattern here?</p>
<p>So, are you going to backpedal, apologize, or give me my money?</p>
<p>When the same thing can be achieved via a different drug (with no side effects) then it invalidates the whole thing. What you need to show me is one study that shows a pro of smoking that cannot be duplicated better by any other drug.</p>
<p>btw, the studies you posted were statistical reviews. (Not exactly hard evidence)</p>
<p>Backpedaling, then. Smoking is a means of dosing yourself with nicotine. Nobody would smoke if not for that. You think anybody would drink vodka or grain alcohol if it wasn’t alcoholic? Come on.</p>
<p>You can change the rules now, but that doesn’t make you right. Those studies discuss smoking and use the words “smoking” and “cigarette”. Everybody understands that smoking and dosing with nicotine are linked. You owe me a thousand dollars, and until you admit it or apologize for being so rash, every response to you will be to the effect of your owing me $1,000. I’m willing to accept an apology.</p>
<p>Plus, let’s not overlook the fact that I found those three articles in about three minutes of searching. Are you so confident in the PubMed that you’d bet $1,000 that some crackpot didn’t do a study on the benefits of breathing automobile exhaust?</p>