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Smoking Makes Them Live Longer
by Russell Saunders
It’s a well-established fact that smoking is terrible for you, even in small amounts. When it comes to wholly preventable risk factors for a host of serious diseases, smoking cigarettes is right at the top of the list.
And yet we all know someone who seemed to live forever despite smoking like a chimney every day of his or her adult life.
What is it about these individuals that allow them to stave off the damage cigarettes usually wreak on the human body? Is there something innate that keeps them healthy longer than other smokers who suffer from smoking-related diseases like cancer?
A new study published in the Journals of Gerontology, Series A explores these questions. In particular, the authors investigate whether there are genetic markers that might indicate which people are more likely to have a predisposition to longevity. And they looked in long-lived smokers to find them.
Researchers from UCLA and University of Southern California (USC) took a group of smokers who had lived to 80 or older despite maintaining the habit, and compared them both to non-smokers their own age and current smokers who were younger. They found both groups of older individuals were comparable in terms of their mortality, as well as their signs of disease such as markers of inflammation on blood tests. This was in contrast to the group of younger smokers, who had higher rates of mortality compared to other people their own age, and already showed signs of worse physiological functioning. The majority of the younger smoking group was not predicted to live as long as the older smokers.
Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat http://philosophers-stone.co.uk
Source: http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=3006
