Issuu

MEDICALEXAMINER FREE T AKE-HO ME COP Y!

HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS

MARCH 1, 2024

AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006

AUGUSTARX.COM

THEDEADLIESTDRUG Nobody smokes anymore, right? It would be nice if that was true. Unfortunately, worldwide there are more smokers today than there were in the early 1990s. Surprised? Scientific American reported in September 2023 that even though the percentage of people who smoke globally has dropped from 27.8% in 1990 to 19.6% in 2019, due to population growth the actual number of smokers has increased during the same period, from about a billion people in 1990 to 1.14 billion in 2019. Smoking is Enemy #1 in the world of healthcare. All by itself, smoking is responsible for 13.6% of all deaths across the globe. CDC statistics say smoking kills more people in the U.S. each year than car crashes, alcohol, drug overdoses, and HIV combined. It is the runaway leader among our deadliest drugs, the top three of which, ironically enough — tobacco, alcohol, and opioid painkillers — are legal. To illustrate how deadly tobacco is, if you added up all the time lost compared to normal life expectancies by those who died as a result of smoking, the loss in 2019 alone was 200 million years, says a study published in Lancet. Those numbers pale in comparison to future projections. The 100 million people who died from tobacco-related causes in the 20th century is expected to grow to 1 billion during the 21st century. Tobacco’s deadly effects are manifest in four main ways: heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), stroke, and cancers of the trachea, bronchi, and lungs. And that’s just the tip of tobacco’s unsalubrious iceberg. But what would you expect when cigarette smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including dozens of carcinogens like arsenic? The thing is, nicotine creates havoc in ways many people would never expect. Smoking is bad for skin. It contributes to premature aging. It elevates the risk of tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain eye diseases. It can cause impotence. And according to CDC statistics, people who smoke are 30-40% more likely to get type 2 diabetes than people who don’t smoke. Who knew, right? But again, a cocktail of more than 7,000 foreign substances in places they’re not supposed to be has to wreak damage of some kind, and it turns out to be many kinds. Before proceeding any farther, a word of apology: surely very

few people fit into two competing demographics: people who smoke and read the Medical Examiner. That has to be a rare breed. At least we hope it is. So then, why is this our front page story? Many reasons. Maybe there are one or two of our readers out there who still smoke. Surveys show the vast majority of smokers want to quit. And many who have quit are in a constant battle to stay quit. Plus many of us have loved ones, friends, co-workers and others in our lives who still smoke. How can smokers be encouraged to quit? It’s a challenge that some have said is more difficult than quitting heroin. But it is definitely doable: as of 2002 there are more ex-smokers than current smokers. Quite a few methods have been devised to help pry smokers away from their hardearned money, but the only FDA-approved methods are NRTs (nicotine replacement therapies), smoking cessation medicines, and counseling. Notice that e-cigarettes did not make the approved list. Long-term data on their health effects are unknown, versus decades of well-documented results from taking the FDA-approved route. If you’re one of those many smokers who want to quit, don’t go it alone. Talk to your doctor and get help to succeed. Quitting by age 40 cancels 90% of smoking’s risk, but quitting at any age greatly reduces the risk of a tobacco-related death. Quitting might not be easy, but it’s well worth the effort. +

WE DO E C I F F O HOUSE CALLS!