The problem with screenings is the false positives. It leads to unnecessary biopsies and tremendous anxiety. It does save a very small percentage of lives.
Drs. will lie to you to both discourage bad behavior and give you hope.
For those of you fighting the good fight re: quitting smoking, stay with it. Even if you slip up now and then. Your loved oneswi thank you for it.
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Thoughts and good doctors
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I’d be shocked if that’s a common thing.
Good thought. Cancer is caused by DNA replication going haywire in mitosis, or if there is a large mutation from say, radiation. Cancer cells also make their own telomerase, which causes them to avoid natural cell death. Perhaps this might be the theory behind your hypothesis? Or maybe it is the long term effects of free radical chemicals oxidizing in the body, which may not occur until later? I wonder if there has been any research done on this…
My grandfather was a businessman in New Orleans. He smoked four packs a day and died of lung cancer at 67. My entire family, save for me, are physicians. My youngest brother is an internist, who smoked for 20 years. He didn’t know what I had looked up. He now agrees.
4 packs a day, dayum!
While I loved my grandfather, he was also a tyrant. He received the Medal of the Rising Sun, the highest peacetime medal given by Japan, because his company was the first to trade with Japan after WWII. His grandchildren, me and my siblings, still have that medal.
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What you are saying is technically true. Heavy smokers who have quit continue to have a higher risk than a never smoker when it comes to lung cancer, however, it’s more important to look at absolute risk than relative risk when comparing the two groups (heavy smokers who have quit vs. never smokers).
Here’s why…
The lifetime risk of developing lung cancer in a never smoker who lives to 80 is somewhere around 50-70:100,000 or 0.05-0.07%
The lifetime risk of developing lung caner in a heavy smoker who lives to 80 is about 20,000:100,000 or 20% (lots of variables, but this is for an otherwise healthy white male who started smoking at 20, smokes a pack per day and has no family history of lung cancer).
10-15 years after a heavy smoker quits smoking, their risk of lung cancer drops, but remains about 50% greater than a never smoker (again, lots of variables). Simply saying it’s 50% higher than a never smoker sounds horrible. You’re still twice as likely as a never smoker to develop lung cancer. That’s the relative risk though (risk of a heavy smoker who quit relative to a never smoker). The absolute risk of lung cancer is a different story. The absolute risk of a heavy smoker who quits is 75-110:100,000 or 0.075-0.11%. That is still much, much better than 20% and only 0.025-0.04% higher than a never smoker.
A heavy smoker who quits smoking dramatically reduces their risk of cancer. Yes, it is still higher than a never smoker when looking at relative risk, but the absolute risk (which is the only thing that really matters) is way less than a heavy smoker and only hundredths of a percent higher than a never smoker.
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OK. Not exactly what I have researched, but close enough. Crossing my fingers!
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He would often say paraphrasing “I’m holding in my formerly nicotine-stained hands…” so I always assumed he was a previous cigarette smoker.
Yeah, I heard him say that many times.
Yeah, that’s where I’m coming from. Again, I would never suggest advocating that someone not quit. My wife’s grandmother, for example; she’s 90 years old, smokes, has for 60 years or more. My wife sasses her when she finds out she’s smoked. Yes she has COPD, is on oxygen, takes breathing treatments, but hell, she’s 90! Smoking a few Virginia Slims is probably the only enjoyment she has left in her world, aside from seeing the grands and great grands. Could she eek out a couple of more years if she quit? Maybe. Would her quality of life improve? At this point I doubt it and think it may even take her out sooner.
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I would trade 90 right now. Leonard Nemoy died of COPD 20 or 30 years after quitting. He smoked a lot, so I gather. Can anybody believe that Keith Richards is still alive?
Yeah, I worded that wrongly. I was trying to say that I don’t think he currently smokes. I’d forgotten that formally nicotine stained fingers line, though.
After the nuclear fallout subsides, Keith Richards and a roach are going to crawl out of a VW bug.
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First time I thought you were funny. When it comes to the kinds of things that mean life or death, we all seem to come together. I hope that we can come more together more often. Trump or not, let’s speak to one another as if we all had something to live for.
Sorry to bring it up again. I see it was already mentioned. My bad.
I tried to quit hundreds of times. Then the last time, it was suddenly easy. I was just done. But I don’t think I would have succeeded without the hundreds of failures preceding that one time.
