Smoking – A Big Health Problem

Published on April 24, 2009 3:49 AM

The most common cause of cancer deaths in men and women is lung cancer. There was a time when every movie star and teenage rebel was lighting up, but then some bright spark worked out that cigarettes smoking was the main cause of lung cancer. And everyone knows this, instead of this they continue to smoke.  
BTW: smoking can cause also a lot of diseases such as heart and lung diseases, shortness of breath, heart attacks, emphysema, bronchitis, mouth and voice box cancers, bladder and stomach cancer, and possibly also breast cancer.

But smokers can protect their health only if they will kick the habit, because stopping smoking can reduce the risk of getting a lung cancer, and also can reduce the risk of getting breast cancer and leukemia.

Frequently, smokers put doctor this very important question: "Well, how much does a reduction in smoking or stopping smoking reduce my risk of getting cancer?"

Dr. Y. Song and his co-workers at The Seoul National University in Korea tried to find the answer of this question. That’s why he studied a group of patients from 1992 to 2003. And they found that when patients reduced their smoking from heavy smoking (over 20 cigarettes per day) to light smoking (less than 10 cigarettes per day), the risk of lung cancer was reduced by 37 percent. But they also found that even after cutting down, the lung cancer risk was still elevated compared to non-smokers.
For example they discovered that lung cancer in heavy smokers was 9 times higher than the rate in people who had never smoked, and 5 times higher than the risk in people who had been ex-smokers for a long length of time. By reducing from heavy smoking to light smoking, the 32 percent reduction in risk of lung cancer was still over 2 times higher than the risk in people who had quit totally, 3.5 times higher than the risk of lung cancer in people who had quit for a long length of time, and still 6 times higher than the risk of people who had never smoked.

They also found that even other smoking related cancers, such as throat cancer, esophageal cancer, kidney cancer and pancreatic cancer were not reduced by reduction from heavy smoking to light smoking, but were reduced by 37 percent by quitting. These cancers were least frequent if patients had never smoked.

As it is know, is not so easy to quit, but if smokers want to be healthy they have to try to kick the bad habit just now.