In some studies, at the end of them, I see:

“quitting smoking reduces your chance of dying from all causes.”

So if I quit smoking I’m less likely to get hit by a bus?

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    As a former ICU nurse I can tell you that someone who has been taking good care of their body, is fit and healthy, has a better chance of survival and less complications while recovering as someone who didn’t. No matter the injury.

    If you get hit by a bus and your lung is compromised it has a harder time compensating for the injury if it was already damaged.

    So yes. You might have a better chance to survive a car crash if you haven’t been smoking.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      You might have a better chance to survive a car crash if you haven’t been smoking.

      That’s probably why I’ve survived so many car crashes.

    • philpo@feddit.org
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      23 days ago

      Yeah. Came here to write exactly this.

      What OP misunderstood is the old tale of mortality vs. lethality.

      In a simplified explanation: Mortality defines the percentage of deaths in a population by a cause.

      Lethality is the percentage of deaths of people suffering from a cause.

      In our case:

      • Smokers might only get hit by a bus slightly less often or slightly more often(1) (Mortality)

      • But they have a far greater chance of dying from it when they get hit. The same can be said for being shot,etc. Being a smoker always reduces your statistical chances.

      (1:Actually quite fascinating - there is conflicting evidence on that one, as smoking is often statistically associated with substance abuse and bad health - which increases the likelihood of major trauma events, but on the other hand smokers die earlier,leaving more old people to walk in front of vehicles due to reduced cognitive abilities)

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    You should ABSOLUTELY quit smoking. Also, you should stop getting hit by buses. Neither one are good for you.

  • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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    23 days ago

    Lights Cigarette

    Immediately assassinated by Truck-Kun

    Gets Isekai Anime with Absurdly Specific Title

    Profit?

  • _bcron@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    “All-cause mortality” simply means death from all (or any) causes.

    So for smokers, you got a buttload of people with this thing in common, and rather than look specifically at something like deaths from lung cancer, you take a step back and look at deaths from anything. And then go in and try to find correlations and help to understand those correlations.

    It’s kind of a chicken and egg scenario, because some of those causes might not be from smoking, but from a person’s proclivity to smoke.

    For example, smokers might possibly be more impulsive than non-smokers (generally speaking) and there might be a higher risk of motor vehicle fatalities in the smoker group, but the cause wouldn’t be smoking, it’d be underlying behavioral differences that would make someone more likely to smoke.

    It’s basically looking at mortality from a distance as opposed to looking at very specific things up close (but with the data it lets people zoom in on everything)

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    It references general body health and the sorts of things that make you age and die. Heart health, lung condition, oral health, stroke risk, skin quality, etc. All of that stuff is affected negatively by smoking. Stopping nearly instantly makes these things better, and they improve over time. So basically if you stop smoking, any way you could die of natural causes drops.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    Let’s say you’re a smoker and your workplace says you have to go outside to smoke.

    It’s the middle of November, it’s cold, it’s rainy, you’re outside smoking and get pneumonia.

    Your lungs are already weak from smoking and the pneumonia kills you.

    If you quit smoking, you would have been inside, dry, safe, less likely to contract pneumonia and less likely to die from it if you get it.

  • Shanedino@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    If you got hit by a bus your chance for recovery would be better as a non-smoker than a smoker.

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Buses drive outside.

    People tend to step outside for a smoke.

    So yeah, you actually might be more likely to get hit by a bus if you smoke, your smoking spot is anywhere near a bus route, and you are ducking out there 2-4 times a day to stand there smoking while you play with your phone.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Basically yeah, obviously no. Cause of death isn’t broken down nearly as far as people think it is. You can check it out on the CDC’s Web portal. So while you can get the results for motor vehicle accidents, you may not get the results for motor vehicle versus pedestrian.

    So all they’re actually claiming is that in the statistics, people who quit smoking are less represented in every category.

  • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    It means your life expectancy immediately increases. There are some things that, depending on your age, improving won’t improve life expectancy. ie, a 99 year old doing something that reduces their risk of colon cancer but nothing else will not reduce their chances of dying because something else will kill them first with 100% certainty.

    Quitting smoking decreases risk of death for absolutely everyone in every circumstance

  • lugal@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    I first read it as “dying for a cause”. I guess cigarettes make you more revolutionary or something