Smoking Was Bad, Now It’s Even Worse

Somewhere in time, smoking became cool. It was classy. Lighting up in a dark stall in a bar, whisky on the table, the slow mesmerizing?flight of smoke through the air. It’s been in movies longer than I’ve been alive, it still is, and it’s in a way still perceived as a stylish act.

But we know a lot more now than we did back then. We know the risks, and while that doesn’t stop many people, at least they’re aware of the harm and damage they’re causing themselves. Or are they aware? Turns out, smoking is actually even worse than we thought, a new study finds:

A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States. Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer.

The new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who were followed for 10 years. […] The researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.

It might look fashionable, but if you need to smoke to look good, you should enjoy it while it lasts, because you might not last long. Of all the habits there are, this is one of the worst, if you set yourself one goal for the near future, make it giving up the tobacco.