Cigar/pipe smokers live longer

[Jahungo]

Someone mentioned the fact that pipe smokers may be wealthier, and that is a possible explanation. Another might be that smoking a pipe acts as a sort of "replacement" for other unhealthy behaviors, such as snacking on junk food. A lot of people snack when bored or stressed but not really hungry, which can be quite unhealthy. If you replace snacking two or three times a day with smoking a pipe two or three times a day, I can see how that would end up being better for you in the long run. I have no real idea how often most pipe smokers smoke, though. If they smoke as much as the average cigarette smoker then I doubt that there is any way this is true.

[Admiraldinty]

Originally Posted by Ana Ng

If you don't mind me asking, are you being serious? Did you really ask your wife if you can smoke?

Not in any formal sort of way. I enjoy pipe smoking, she doesn't like it for a whole host of reasons (chiefly, the smell). I jokingly tried to convince her with evidence showing that pipe smoking is good for you, but she wasn't having it. So, I don't smoke.

Originally Posted by Admiraldinty

I enjoy pipe smoking, she doesn't like it for a whole host of reasons (chiefly, the smell).

But the smell's the best thing about pipe smoking! I love that sweet tobacco smell. But maybe it gets old and stale if it's around all the time.

[Admiraldinty]

Originally Posted by mommyrex

But the smell's the best thing about pipe smoking! I love that sweet tobacco smell. But maybe it gets old and stale if it's around all the time.

Yeah, that's pretty much what she objects to, which I understand. I've stood downwind of old pipe-smokers before, and it's not pleasant.

[Ana Ng]

Originally Posted by Admiraldinty

Not in any formal sort of way. I enjoy pipe smoking, she doesn't like it for a whole host of reasons (chiefly, the smell). I jokingly tried to convince her with evidence showing that pipe smoking is good for you, but she wasn't having it. So, I don't smoke.

Ah, I was picturing the episode of Scrubs where Carla won't let Turk do anything because she's pregnant. That is very considerate of you. Can you smoke outside? I smoke cloves, which are not quite a normal cigarette- a nice option if you can smoke the occasional cigarette.

Originally Posted by Admiraldinty

Yeah, that's pretty much what she objects to, which I understand. I've stood downwind of old pipe-smokers before, and it's not pleasant.

I also love the smell of pipe smoke and smokers, but I grew up in a smoking household, my best friend smokes tons of the ganga, and I myself smoke so I don't know to which extent smoking grosses people out.

[RLS]

Study in process of being published found in literature seach on Pub Med

Mortality and life expectancy in relation to long-term cigarette, cigar and pipe smoking: the Zutphen Study.Streppel MT, Boshuizen HC, Ocké MC, Kok FJ, Kromhout D.
Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. martinet.streppel@rivm.nl

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of long-term smoking on all-cause and cause-specific mortality, and to estimate the effects of cigarette and cigar or pipe smoking on life expectancy. DESIGN: A long-term prospective cohort study. SETTING: Zutphen, The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS: 1373 men from the Zutphen Study, born between 1900 and 1920 and studied between 1960 and 2000. MEASUREMENTS: Hazard ratios for the type of smoking, amount and duration of cigarette smoking, obtained from a time-dependent Cox regression model. Absolute health effects of smoking are expressed as differences in life expectancy and the number of disease-free years of life. MAIN RESULTS: Duration of cigarette smoking was strongly associated with mortality from cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, whereas both the number of cigarettes smoked as well as duration of cigarette smoking were strongly associated with all-cause mortality. Average cigarette smoking reduced the total life expectancy by 6.8 years, whereas heavy cigarette smoking reduced the total life expectancy by 8.8 years. The number of total life-years lost due to cigar or pipe smoking was 4.7 years. Moreover, cigarette smoking reduced the number of disease-free life-years by 5.8 years, and cigar or pipe smoking by 5.2 years. Stopping cigarette smoking at age 40 increased the life expectancy by 4.6 years, while the number of disease-free life-years was increased by 3.0 years. CONCLUSIONS: Cigar or pipe smoking reduces life expectancy to a lesser extent than cigarette smoking. Both the number of cigarettes smoked and duration of smoking are strongly associated with mortality risk and the number of life-years lost. Stopping smoking after age 40 has major health benefits.

PMID: 17400948 [PubMed - in process]

Pipe and cigar smokers have marginally greater--not enormously greater-- incidence of mouth and throat cancers. They have lower rates of lung cancer than those who inhale cigarette smoke, close to the norm for non-smokers. They also have lower rates of heart disease than non-smokers, something that the current manner of collecting statistics obscures. Further, tobacco in all its forms is associated with better short term memory and perception, and is an anti-depressant. The propaganda about tobacco is nearly endless, as likewise the refusal to entertain evidence and arguments in their own right if they can be shown to have been funded by any industrial sources (but it is clear, in advance, that the federal government will not fund studies that pursue hypotheses contrary to their own; as the supreme court discovered when it threw out the finding reached by the FDA conflating different studies with different test parameters and so by that means claiming to show a statistically significant deleterious effect of second hand smoke--a conclusion that the court said did not even meet the FDA's own low standards). There was a study published in the British Medical Journal that studied over 40,000 families of smokers for 40 years, and found NO higher incidence of cancer in the families. The American Cancer Society, *all* of whose prior studies had up to that date focused on the families of smokers in just this way, was so concerned that it immediately claimed that the study of families in this way was invalid, because in some cases the families may have separated (true, but it turns out statistically insignificant). Then they claimed that *everyone* had been exposed seriously to second-hand smoke and so being in proximity to chain smokers for 40 years and walking into a smoky bar once in 40 years amounted to the same. Finally, they found that of course there was, somewhere, private money in the study--I don't recollect whose, or even whether it was tobacco related, but it was private--and that was enough for them to canonize the ad hominem fallacy and declare that they need not look at evidence or arguments because private money was involved in the study. Only when the coercive agency of the state is involved are studies *really* serious--all others may be ignored, because they are merely *privately* funded. Two plus two cannot be 4 if it is concluded in a private study. It is propagandistic to the utmost degree. One could go on--e.g., the change of the serious medical account of "addiction" to cover virtually any activity, from eating chocolate to drinking coffee. We are a pliable society, no longer given to requiring argument and proof. Propaganda is enough. No denial here that inhaling cigarettes & chain smoking can be harmful to one's health (one notes that somehow some do this, live a long life, and never contract cancer: but the statistics indicate a link). But "smoking" is broader than chain-smoking cigarettes and inhaling, and other forms of smoking do not have the same liabilities. Incidentally, anyone who ever smoked, even fifty years prior, and then at the age of 81 has a heart attack shoveling snow out of his driveway, is marked by the "health" statistics as a "smoking casualty". This is so irresponsible a use of statistics as to be beyond belief, but that is the level of our "public health advocates" mentality.

[KermieD]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

Mmm, I must share that with my Uncle, an avid cigar smoker who died of throat cancer earlier this year in his fifties...

I shall also share with my aunt, who refused to eat any food or put any liquid in her mouth that was in any way processed or had any additives whatsoever in them her entire life...who died of pancreatic cancer in her fifties.

This is why anecdotal evidence is usually unreliable.

[Austin Allegro]

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

I've got a professor who consistently brings this "factoid" up in class as an example of information which is suppressed/ignored by the liberal media. He cites it as a matter of fact, further citing heavy tobacco intake by the Japanese, whom he cites as the nation with the longest life expectancy. Something about smokers--and kind of smokers--living longer, or at the very least experiecing no negative effects, strikes me as very, very wrong. Any input?

I seem to recall the 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health in the USA had statistics that showed pipe smokers lived longer than non-smokers, but I've never actually seen the report, only heard this reported second hand. (no pun intended...). Subsequent studies show marginal increased mortality among pipe smokers as opposed to non smokers, I think.