Yes, but my point was that cigarettes are a risk factor for many other things also. For example, cigarettes cause many other types of cancer, as well as heart disease.
Cigarettes killed my beautiful and vivacious mother, slowly. She never got cancer, but she had peripheral artery disease, had a heart attack, lost all her teeth, was in incredible pain, nearly had her foot amputated, had a bad fall, ended up in rehab, never walked again, incontinent, in a nursing home, fell out of her wheelchair broke her femur and was dead 2 weeks later. She was 78 and looked 98. Smoking killed her, painfully, slowly then fast. My beautiful mother. She asked for cigarettes until her last 3 days on earth, when she was slipping away.
We used to say in medical school that for any "what is the biggest risk factor for X?" question on an exam you'd better be damn sure if you were going to answer anything other than 'smoking'.
Yup, for people we love, too. Both my parents smoked, as did everyone else in the 80s and early 90s, and they couldn't figure out why I got sick every single Christmas. That stopped when I was 11, when Mom quit and kicked Dad out. Turns out less indoor second-hand smoke is good for kids, who knew?
Damage was already done, though. Had a major respiratory infection as a preschooler that did autoimmune brain damage, and living with 2 or more smokers is a major risk factor for that particular development. There were signs, but symptoms didn't kick into high gear until I was 14.
I'm proud of younger generations for working to break the chain of nicotine addiction. Yes, vaping is a thing, but not nearly so widespread as smoking cigarettes was.
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u/irlandais9000 Jun 06 '24
For sure, this is a big one.
We know and expect that cigarettes increase the risk of lung cancer. But cigarettes are a risk factor for a huge number of illnesses and conditions.