Cancer Prevention 101: Smoking

    People consistently hear that they should avoid smoking for a plethora of valid reasons, yet many start anyway and can't seem to stop. Let's dive into the scary biology and statistics of smoking and cancer.

    To start, we should note that e-cigarettes have not been around long enough to collect trustworthy data on cancer correlation, but they do contain chemicals like formaldehyde that are known carcinogens. Mechanistically, chemicals in cigarette smoke damage the cellular lining of the lungs; the longer a person has been a smoker, the more likely it is that the body will fail to repair this damage, resulting in the development of lung cancer.

    Now let's check out some statistics that show how avoiding any sort of smoking is absolutely essential to lowering your cancer risk and pursuing a healthy future. According to Medical News Today, "a 30-year-old smoker can expect to live about 35 more years, whereas a 30-year-old non-smoker can expect to live 53 more years." Lung and bronchus cancer takes up the highest proportion of cancer-related deaths: 21% in both men and women. 80-90% of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking. And coming full circle, smokers are 15-30x more likely to develop or die from lung cancer than non-smokers. By choosing to stay away from cigarettes, you can make your lung cancer risk 3% of what it would be if you started or continued smoking!

    Smoking marijuana poses a similar risk, as marijuana smoke shares many of the carcinogenic chemicals that cigarette smoke does. Even if smoking cigarettes and marijuana are both legal in California, the two are still monumental risk factors for developing cancer. Avoiding or eliminating any smoking habits you have is a key step to ensuring a significantly longer and healthier life.

 

Article by Jeremy Karkafi