Dr. Mitch : How a single cigarette can harm you

Your two-minute checkup with Dr. Mitch Schulman, brought to you by board certified hand surgeon, Dr. Daniel Durand, for relief of hand pain, book a consultation now at montrealhandsurgery.com. 752, we say good morning to our resident health expert here on the Endocarter Morning Show. Dr. Mitch Schulman, how are you, Dr? Very fun. I hope everyone's having a great start to their year and staying tied down if they're going down. No, Wendy.

nasty wind today. It's incredible, absolutely incredible. If you're a smaller person, it's easy to get swept away. And I don't mean in a good way. Hang on to those little dogs too. Mitch, we're going to talk about a serious matter here. And it's the impact that smoking has on our health. We know smoking is not not good for you at all, can lead to all kinds of problems. But we're going to focus on the fact that what one single cigarettes can do to impact your health.

Yes, something like taking away 17 minutes of your life if you're a guy in 20 minutes of your life or 22 minutes of your life if you're a woman. We do know, by the way, that smoking tends to affect women worse than men. It has to do with the anatomy, physiology, and the way different bodies, different genders handle cigarettes. And it's the tar, obviously, and all the other contaminants, the toxins in the cigarettes that do all this. People have known

That if you smoke is not good for you, duh. But the idea being in this article in the Journal of Addiction, looking at huge numbers of men and women, they were able to quantify the actual cost. And a lot of people might think, OK, so instead of dying at 80, I'll die at 70. Right? It costs me 10 years of life if I've been smoking 10 cigarettes a day for a long period of time. The truth of the matter, though, it actually diminishes the quality of your life as well.

So it's not just, God forbid that you'll die younger. It's also that you'll die thicker and be sicker for a longer period of time. And I think that's something people don't really appreciate. The other thing people don't appreciate is people were smoking tobacco for a very long period of time, right? It was only the Surgeon General's report in the States in 64 that started to pull together the data and made us realize how bad it was for us. And that's something people don't understand about science.

So many things get thrown at us vaping, for example, before the science has a chance to actually go through the steps that it takes to figure out what's going on. And so we're still finding out things about cigarettes. We're going to find out even more about vaping. Our whole view of alcohol has changed. And if people ever say, well, you can't trust science at flip-flops, what I say is think back to 64 in the type of phone that you used.

And think of the phone that I'm now talking to you on right now. Um, 60 odd years, um, in some cases, very odd years that won't go there, but 60 years and look at the dramatic difference in terms of the technology. And you'd never say, Oh, science. What do they know? Look what happened to the telephone. If it had been proper back in 64, I wouldn't have the phone that I have had then. And you realize that things evolve. And that's unfortunately what has to happen with medicine.

And with the science and the technology around medicine, as we learn more, we understand more. But now the big concern is what's going to be the story with vaping. Yeah. Because the stuff that we're inhaling with the vapes was not stuff that was meant to be inhaled. And what difference or what changes will that cause? We have no way of predicting right now. A thought or two and a word of encouragement, maybe for those who are trying to quit, Dr. Mitch. First off, as soon as you stop, you'll see a benefit.

If they give you an example of an individual who smoked tin cigarettes a day and if they stopped as of January the 1st, they could add a whole week of life by February the 5th, a whole month as of August the 5th and 50 days after only a year. So there's a benefit at any time you stop. You'll see a dramatic improvement over time and it will. People often say, well, I've been smoking for so long. What difference does it make now if I stop? There's always a benefit.

The other thing is anything we can do to keep kids from starting. It turns out that the younger you start, the more devastating the effects on your body and on your health, which I suspect makes sense, doesn't it? And so anything we can do to keep kids away from smoking, whether as we've been doing by increasing the price of cigarettes, which seems to have been one of the most effective deterrence, unfortunately, for those who are addicted to it, I understand the cost.

But certainly that's worked very effectively as a deterrent for younger people starting. In terms of stopping, there's no one way that works better. We do find that a combination of medication and counseling works the best. And the government has chipped in to try and make it easier. Your pharmacist can help you. But whatever you can do, if you're smoking now, to reduce or to stop quilt turkey, whatever works for you. And most people find that they stay addicted to something

Not because of the thing itself, but because of the stuff it's associated with. So I have a cigarette every morning with my cup of coffee. Well, maybe you have to change your morning routine so that you don't crave that cigarette, but you crave something healthy instead. There you go. Dr. Mitch, thanks for a great week. Have a terrific weekend. You too, all the very best and all the very best everybody listening.