Smokers living longer,just like everyone else!!!!

Antis claim, without adjusting for socio-economic status, that smokers die 5(or whatever) years sooner than non-smokers.

Since everyone is living longer,this includes smokers!!

Gary K.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/06/sky-is-not-falling.html

Despite the popular yarn, we are not dying in record numbers from unhealthy lifestyles and modern life is not killing us.

There simply is no good evidence.




Babies born in 2006 can expect to live to 75.4 years for boys and 80.7 years for girls. There's been a fairly steady increase for more than a century. By comparison, babyboomers born in 1950 had a life expectancy of 65.5 and 71 years, respectively. And our grandparents born in 1900 had a life expectancy of a mere 48 and 51 years, respectively.

So much for statistics.

My grandparents all lived at least 20 years past their expected life span.

My parents and their siblings are all live well past their expected life spans, in fact longer than I, as a boomer, are expected to exist.

Untimely deaths have only occurred in my family by non-smokers.

In my lifetime, most early deaths occurred when former members of farming families have moved to the city. How many people would say farming in fresh air, in the world of mother nature, should be a reason for these statistics?

when ever I need to pick up a newspaper I look at the orbituarys and see the age of the people that are listed most of them are 80 to 99 years old at the time of death.

there was one person there that died 26 yrs due to a car crash

quote:

In my lifetime, most early deaths occurred when former members of farming families have moved to the city. How many people would say farming in fresh air, in the world of mother nature, should be a reason for these statistics?

........................

Depends on the area,not all rural areas are healthier.

Poverty level has an effect also.
Gary K.
Cancer deaths

Heart disease deaths

Looks much the same;but,I could not get the picture to copy.

It is at:
http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/giscvh2/Results.aspx

Here are some other maps,and tables.

Note the difference between the rural mid-west and the rural south.

Gary K.

Number of Deaths per 100,000 Population, 2005
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=58&cat=2

Number of Deaths Due to Diseases of the Heart per 100,000 Population, 2004

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=77&cat=2

POVERTY LEVEL
More Blacks(regretably) live in or near the poverty level.

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=14&cat=1
Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity, states (2005-2006), U.S. (2006)

United States..Percent

White.......... 12%
Black.......... 33%
Hispanic....... 29%
Other.......... 20%


Number of Deaths per 100,000 Population by Race/Ethnicity, 2004
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=60&c...b=17&yr=14&typ=3&o=d

United States..Rate

White........ 786.3
Black........ 1,027.3
Other........ 478.0

You can not blame this on smoking. In many of the states of the South,more whites smoke than do blacks.

Smoking Rates for Adults by Race/Ethnicity, 2007

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparetable.jsp?ind=82...8&typ=2&o=d&sort=110

State..........White...Black
North Carolina 23.1%... 22.9%

Mississippi... 24.3%... 22.4%

Tennessee..... 24.8%....21.8%

Alabama....... 22.7%... 21.2%

South Carolina 21.9%... 20.6%

Florida....... 20.5%... 18.5%

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gkayser30,

That is even more evident than from population stats, when one looks at animal experiments, where they allow smoking & nonsmoking animals to live their full lifespans -- the smoking animals, even when made to smoke several times more than humans, live significantly longer. Here is a survival graph of smoking & nonsmoking mice from a 2005 experiment on mice (links & discussion here):



Even more dramatic were the lifespan differences in a large series of experiments in 1974 on hamsters exposed in groups to variety of industrial pollutants which were tested separately on smoking and nonsmoking hamsters (pdf file).

quote:

Summary on page 40:
With the exception of the two asbestos-exposed groups (Groups 5 and 6), the groups exposed to cigarette smoke lived significantly (p<0.05) longer than their sham-smoke-exposed cohorts. The hamsters exposed to asbestos plus cigarette smoke also outlived their sham-smoke-exposed cohorts; however the difference was not statistically significant. Asbestos decreased the lifespan of the asbestos-exposed groups and therby masked, to a degree, the difference in the survival between the smoke-exposed animals and their sham-smoke-exposed cohorts which is so readly apparent in other groups (Figure 23).

Here is one of the graphs illustrating the consistent general pattern (upper curve is for survival advantage of smoking vs nonsmoking hamsters exceeding 40%, while the lower curve shows weight difference, with smoking hamsters staying thinner by 12 to 25%):

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,