“Yes. Give him his cigarettes. It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.” – You Only Live Twice
An early but failed attempt at a cigarette advertisement as they ran out of orphans too quickly.
Heart attacks were unknown before 1900 – probably because 97% of people before 1900 died in surprise buffalo stampedes and dysentery on the Oregon Trail®.
But I recently learned something that fascinated me. Heart disease has plummeted during the last fifty years. Here’s the graph. I found it here (LINK), with a h/t to Mangun (LINK):
So, heart disease is plummeting. But I thought we were getting fatter?
Not good. There’s a lot of Oreos® and regret in that graph . . . .
According to the NIH, we are getting fatter. But we’ve (more or less) eliminated heart disease as a cause of death. Huh? I would have thought that heart disease would have increased during that time period abetted by a high-fructose corn syrup diet, increasingly sedentary lifestyle, Netflix®, the Internet, and reliance on every modern convenience. Oh, wait, that’s just me.
Not saying being fat is healthy – it’s linked to a large number of issues including very large pants. But not so much heart disease. So what changed between 1900 (effectively zero heart disease) and 1965 (when heart disease peaked) and today?
Cigarettes (graph is from the CDC).
Sure people smoked before 1900. Mark Twain smoked the equivalent of the population of Honduras in cigars every day. And people smoked pipes, often while cultivating manly mustaches that looked like creatures from an H.G. Wells novel. But cigarettes? Not so much, as cigarettes were French, and even back in 1900 no one liked the French. 54 cigarettes per year per person were smoked in the United States in 1900. In 1965, the peak year for heart attacks was also the peak year for cigarette smoking, when Americans smoked 4,259 cigarettes per person, per year. And they looked so very cool, except for the heart attacks. And the berets.
Also, Watson, an amazing fact: Kermit The Frog has the same middle name as Jack The Ripper. Not a coincidence I think . . . the game is afoot! Let’s catch a Muppet® murderer!
The difference between cigars (or pipes) and cigarettes is that no sane person inhales pipe or cigar smoke. Again, not saying that either of those things are particularly healthy, but it appears that pulling the chemicals from combusting tobacco into your lungs is a bad thing. I mean, not as bad as being an orphan, but bad.
Also, can an orphan eat legally in a family-style restaurant?
Could it be other things, like statins? Nope – they were late to the party, and there are significant debates about if they’re good for you at all. Aspirin may be a factor in the lowered death rates, but it really seems like smoking cigarettes . . . might be bad for you.
As usual, I am compelled by my lawyer to tell you I’m not a doctor, and that pesky court order requires me to tell you that I’m not allowed around pumpkin pie when there’s lighter fluid nearby, but my conclusion is probably pretty innocuous: don’t smoke cigarettes, unless you want to die early of a sudden heart attack and save more Social Security money for me.
About the time the monkey molesters got around to taxing the holy hell out of cigarettes, most people stopped smoking. Good job, Big Daddy Clinton Government. And NOW, yep, we are broke as the Baby Boomers all retire en masse. If we had not raped the tobacco companies at a time the states were flush anyway and didn’t really need the money, we would be much better off financially. We needed to subsidize cigarettes to make them cheaper, AND publicly execute anyone campaigning against smoking and then hoped the seniors stopped whining about having to choose between meds, cat food or cigs. Hell we social engineered with eugenics, why not tobacco? Now, having said that, Japan might be an exception as they seem to smoke like Fukishima and also live long. Might be the raw fish.
(After looking) Yeah, it really might be the fish (really) . . . dunno if the radioactive ones will wake up Godzilla, though . . .
I’ve decided statistics caused more deaths than any other form of mathematics; even nuclear physics. Of course, statistically, my opinion is not shared but by a few, so most will ignore how faddish efforts for health leads to death, and the only reason for the fad is an article citing statistics.
1 out of 3 readers believe you’re on to something.
One thing to note, I’m a total libertarian when it comes to smoking, though I’ve never had a cigarette (cigars and chew, I have had). Whatever floats your boat. Just know the truth of what it may mean.
And your comment was found to be funny funny by 1 out of 1 bloggers!
Heh heh heh I did write about that, too. My conclusion was the problem was journalists who didn’t read science and had multiple deadlines a week.
But, seriously, if you look at what was published after Harvard started the statistical “war on fats in your diet” you can see that it has proven your point, Jess, in the number of people it killed.