Second hand smoke kills almost as many people as car accidents....

Today's Post: Thursday, 4-21-2011

In one of the many online news stories about the recent CDC prediction that more and more places will have no smoking laws by 2010, I found a sentence that contains two huge implications.:

“According to the CDC, secondhand smoke causes an estimated 46,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmoking adults each year.”

Note that 93.12% of these deaths are from heart disease & that total of nearly 50,000 a year is comparable to the number of people killed each year by deaths from car accidents.

Also note that this suggests some of the deaths of smokers are in part from the extra exposure they get to second hand smoke. That makes it quite likely that second hand smoke may kill MORE people currently each year than car accidents!

1. If you dislike the idea of dying in a car wreck, this very forcefully suggests you would also be well advised to avoid ALL tobacco smoke!

Even second hand smoke is likely to kill you as a car accident.

Vote in favor of smoking restrictions if offered the chance. If your local or state legislators are considering the passing of laws to ban smoking in any area you might be in, write or phone them to vote in favor! Print out this post or email it to them if needed to explain why!

Vote in favor of all increase of taxes on cigarettes or tobacco, particularly larger ones, if offered the chance. If your local or state legislators are considering the passing of such laws or enacting such taxes, write or phone them to vote in favor! Print out this post or email it to them if needed to explain why!

(Such taxes have been proven to reduce the number of new, younger smokers; induce some smokers to quit; and cause people who still smoke to smoke less. Each of those will reduce your exposure to second hand smoke.

In addition, their government will increase their revenue without harming anyone in the local economy who doesn’t make money from smoking! And, best of all their area will have lower costs for ambulance and hospitalization and treatment of heart disease and cancers! This is a true triple win for them to do.

In communities that banned smoking almost everywhere, within two years the heart attack rate and ambulance trips for heart attacks went down significantly. This shows that not only does tobacco smoke CAUSE heart disease initially, it TRIGGERS heart attacks in people who might have escaped them otherwise!)

If you are exposed to second hand smoke at your job, either get a job with a better, better informed, employer or see if you can talk your current one into banning smoking in their workplace and helping interested employees who smoke to quit entirely.

If you have friends who smoke, make an effort to phone or email them much more often than you meet in person or only meet them in a place where they can’t smoke.

If you encounter smoke in a public place, escape immediately if there is an OK way to do so.

2. Note that 93.12% of these deaths are from heart disease.

Tell that to every single smoker you know that you care anything about or who is considering quitting smoking or taking it up!

WE now know that tobacco smoke CAUSES heart disease initially; and it TRIGGERS heart attacks in people who might have escaped them otherwise.

We also now know that EVERY single exposure to tobacco smoke begins to cause heart disease which means that even beginning (often young) and light smokers are harmed. AND, it also means that EVERY smoker is harmed every time they are exposed to tobacco smoke. THIS is the most grave and serious health threat from smoking or second hand smoke exposure.

Guess how many smokers know this?

Even among smokers trying to quit, from what I’ve seen, it’s virtually zero!

Smokers have heard that smoking causes lung cancer. But most of them know other smokers who are older who haven’t gotten lung cancer. Then they assume they will be one of the lucky majority who also don’t get it and continue to smoke.

That’s about like not thinking having cobras around is dangerous because you know you can likely avoid tripping over them!

That isn’t the whole truth!

Smokers keep smoking since they assume they will avoid the danger that is rare and have no clue the danger that is vastly more likely to kill them is virtually certain to do so!

If you help get this better known, we will all be better off!

How heart protection has evolved….

Today's Post: Friday, 7-10-2009

1. It started by looking at total cholesterol.

People who had levels a lot higher than 250 seemed to get a lot more heart attacks. And, people who had levels less than 170 seemed to get less.

But close to half the heart attacks happened to people between 200 & 250. So just getting below 250 wasn’t extremely protective.

2. Then researchers found that HDL cholesterol, even though it added to the total was actually protective! It seems that it was the LDL cholesterol that was harmful.

Now, not a lot of focus is on total cholesterol if you can test HDL and LDL. And, it seems that with the protective HDL over 50 or 60 is good and over 90 is better. With LDL over 160 tends to be associated with more heart attacks than close to 100 or a bit less.

3. Then researchers found that larger, fluffier LDL tended to roll along your blood vessels like a tumbleweed or beach ball and caused few problems. However, the tiny LDL particles were literally so small they fit into the molecular cracks on your blood vessel walls and act much like pouring fine sand into an engine and cause the build up of the sludge that causes heart disease and heart attacks.

4. It was then discovered that the ratio of HDL to triglycerides which are each only moderately expensive to test, was virtually a match for measuring the small particle LDL which was very expensive.

People with triglyceride levels above 150 and HDL below 40 had a lot of small particle LDL while people with triglyceride levels below 100 and HDL over 60 had very little.

This is quite important to know.

We know that regular, vigorous exercise from brisk walking, to running, to interval cardio, and to strength training decrease small particle LDL directly which increases HDL & lowers triglycerides.

On the bad side, we now know that all hydrogenated vegetable oils whether partially or completely and the trans fats this generates directly INCREASE small particle LDL!

This means this junk is literally heart attack starter. Never ingest it if you can possibly avoid it. The safe amount to consume is basically zero!

Warning: Today about half of the products on your grocery store shelves that contain fat, still contain this stuff.

So, if the label has anything other than 0 trans fats leave it on the shelf and don’t eat it if someone else buys it. Unfortunately, 0.49 grams per serving can still be listed as 0. So, if you eat five of the servings as many do, you will really get 2.45 grams of trans fat.
So, you also have to avoid any food whatever that lists partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient.

(Note that interesterified fat, is actually 100% hydrogenated oil. It has all the effects of the partial kind and causes type 2 diabetes in addition. Some companies may try to use it to avoid bans on partially hydrogenated oil.)

Niacin increases HDL and lowers LDL. It seems it also lowers triglycerides as well.

That means that niacin directly lowers small particle LDL. That goes a long way towards explaining why niacin has been found to lower death rates better than statin drugs.

5. But we also know that tiny cracks in your artery walls and other damage to your artery walls tend to promote heart disease since they both sludge up and your body may even send cholesterol to those locations to seal them up according to the theory I’ve read.

This means that things that keep your arteries from developing these cracks such as high intakes of vitamin C and the amino acid lysine, and possibly the amino acid proline really do prevent heart disease as Linus Pauling and Dr Mathias Rath have said they do. (Apparently the blood marker Lp(a) measures this damage. When it’s high so are heart attacks. When it’s low there are few heart attacks and your blood vessels, if examined, tend to be clear of plaque.)

This also means that oxidized LDL which can damage your artery walls is much worse than LDL which is not oxidized. So, antioxidant supplements & foods containing them also help prevent heart disease.

Lastly, blood sugar that is too high and possibly insulin levels that are too high directly damage your blood vessels. That’s why type 2 diabetes causes extra heart attacks, blindness, kidney damage, and foot amputations.

Since inflammation can either damage your blood vessels or cause your body to try to patch them, it’s also important we now know to keep inflammation low.

Gum disease causes inflammation and it looks like the bacteria it feeds may do so also. We definitely have found that it tends to cause heart disease. Brushing your teeth at the gumline twice and then flossing at least once every single day & seeing your dentist every 6 months for a teeth cleaning may seem a strange way to protect your heart. But it does.

6. We used to think that a large intake of butter, cream, full fat cheese, full fat milk and fatty meat tended to cause heart disease due to it increasing LDL cholesterol. This looks accurate though as you’ve seen, you need to do more to get full protection.

But we used to think sugar wasn’t that bad. Oops!!

Ingesting sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined grains often or a LOT and not eating many vegetables or exercising not only makes people fat, it increases triglycerides, inflammation, high blood sugar, and often type 2 diabetes. That means it is about as bad for your heart as trans fats or cigarettes!

7. Cigarettes and second hand smoke, not only have been proven to cause plaque build up in your arteries, lowering your HDL and making what’s left ineffective at keeping your blood vessels clear, we now know that cigarette smoke triggers heart attacks.

Yep. That means smoking causes the build up of heart disease and then triggers heart attacks too.

Smoking actually kills far more people this way than the cancers it causes.

Gradually most doctors are learning this. But very few smokers know it.

The bad news is that we now know that you need to do a lot of work to prevent heart disease.

The good news is that if you do it, besides NOT getting heart attacks, strokes, and ED, you’ll be far less fat, live longer for other reasons too, and you’ll escape type 2 diabetes, and are much more likely to avoid senility including Alzheimer’s disease.