Look at Figure 2C in particular. The hazard ratio of smoking is 1.41. The hazard ratio between "Low" (<25th percentile) and "Below Average" (25th-49th percentile) cardiovascular health is 1.95.
In other words, it is better to be a smoker than in the lower 25% of non-exercisers. By far. It's not even close.
Seed oils are 100% a distraction. Once you're in the upper 2.3% of vo2max for your age/sex, _then_ you have the right to worry about seed oils. Until then, save your energy for interval training.
You seem to be hiding an assumption, which is that it only makes sense to completely solve the highest hazard ratio before even considering the next highest hazard ratio. But why would that be the case?
> it only makes sense to completely solve the highest hazard ratio before even considering the next highest hazard ratio. But why would that be the case?
Seed-oil harm is nowhere close to the second-highest hazard. That's the point. If you're obsessing around optimising your oil consumption for health, you're probably missing lower-hanging fruit. It's fine to optimise on around the margins, but any more attention than that--assuming you are not a researcher--is overkill.
Yea but it’s easier to eliminate the use of seed oils, assuming they are the cause of some harm, versus trying to get lazy people to exercise. You can force people to exercise, but as evidenced in the past few decades, you can force them not to eat as much trans fats.
Sure exercise is a overall bigger impact, but adjusted for effort, eliminating seed oils is likey a higher effort/value proposition, and that means that at scale, more people are likely to follow through
They listed the specific numeric figure for the harm from smoking, but omitted any such numbers for consuming seed oils, so how are we supposed to judge that? You saying "it's nowhere close" is not data.
If there was actually a huge harm from consuming seed oils then we would probably be seeing a strong, clear signal from epidemiological studies. So far, the data is ambiguous.
That study is “fitness” not “exercise”. Not exactly the same. Also smoking is bad for other reasons than just cardiovascular health (it’s not even the single biggest problem). There’s no chance smoking is less bad overall than not exercising.
While you are technically correct that fitness is not the same as exercise, it is almost impossible to achieve a high level of fitness without purposeful exercise. Especially for the mostly sedentary users of HN.
As for smoking being less bad than not exercising, citation needed. Did you read the article linked by @AlexErrant above?
Are you aware of research that studies cigar smoking specifically?
I’ve never been a cigarette smoker but enjoy a cigar a few times (2-3) a week in the summer (4 months or so out of the year). Obviously not smoking is better, but I’d like to have hard data what kind of risk I’m taking.
Ex: is the risk similar to two drinks a day, is the risk similar to enjoying a bonfire or is it similar to an entire pack of cigarettes.
That study does not address occasional cigar smokers vs frequent. And almost no cigar study makes the important distinction between black & mild type products (which are considered cigars, often inhaled, and smoked daily if not many per day) and Cuban cigar type deals, which are not inhaled and smoked far more seldom
Pipe smoking is even better. The 1964 Surgeon Generals report found that so long as you don't inhale or smoke more than 3 bowls per day, pipe smokers actually lived an average of 2 years longer than NONSMOKERS.
This is a joke right? 1964 was deep in the era of tobacco companies paying for studies that “proved” health benefits. I could believe pipe tobacco was less harmful than cigarettes by a large margin, but not better than not smoking.
The 1964 Surgeon General's report was the first major government acknowledgement of evidence that smoking was harmful. You might visit this hyperlink: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/history/index.htm
I've been curious about this as well. For me I smoke maybe 2/month...one cigar a week at the very most. My guess is it's negligible compared to all the other toxic clouds we walk through in a given week. But hard data would be useful to see.
I would guess it’s roughly linear. Should be good enough as an approximation. So if smoking daily is, say, -8 years life expectancy then smoking weekly is probably around -1 year. Once it’s very infrequent like once a month it’s probably negligible.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
It seems like toning down to 1-2 cigars has measurable benefits but is about what I expected, especially with lung cancer.
Speaking of smoking, it's been shown to have a significant impact on obesity. In that, it dramatically lowers your body weight because it increases your energy expenditure and decreases your hunger. Nicotine is a stimulant. As soon as you stop taking nicotine, your BMI is going up. The delta between smoker and non-smoker BMI in this study was 1.5kg/m^2 [1]
The article argues that the median increase in BMI over time was 0.05kg/m^2/yr. The prevalence of smoking starting in the 80s dropped from 60% to 10%. So smoking rate is going to account for a non-trivial amount of the increased median BMI. In fact, the rate of obesity really started skyrocketing in 1980 which is right when we hit peak cigarette in the US.
If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.
Makes sense when you consider bupropion, a nicotinic receptor antagonist, shows statistically significant weight loss (clinically signifiant when combined with naltrexone). It’s like 60% of the population was on bupropion.
If it’s just to lose weight then you’re probably better off with ozempic than a pack of American Spirits.
Also I dislike the article's use of BMI over very long timescales, going back to the 1800s. BMI is fine for most people these days (because most people have a lot of weight on them, see the article) but a lot of the 1800s BMI gain was probably just due to better nutrition not higher fat percentages. Over long time horizons we probably want to measure waist-to-height ratio or body fat percentages. The 1890s BMI delta was probably all lean mass, and good-to-neutral whereas the 1990s BMI delta was probably all fat mass and overwhelmingly bad. I’d argue that probably continued until 1940 where the thinnest 10% begin to remain constant, having their basic nutrition needs saturated.
tl;dr: it's almost certainly not seed oils — and maybe not smoking is making us fat? I’m gonna look for a trend a write up a blog post haha.
If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.
the negative health effects of smoking negates the weight loss . despite being slimmer, smokers die 10 years earlier compared to the general population. obese people only lose a few years (1-3 years for moderately obese men).
Which do you think is worse: smoking, or seed oils?
Which do you think is worse: smoking, or not exercising?
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Look at Figure 2C in particular. The hazard ratio of smoking is 1.41. The hazard ratio between "Low" (<25th percentile) and "Below Average" (25th-49th percentile) cardiovascular health is 1.95.
In other words, it is better to be a smoker than in the lower 25% of non-exercisers. By far. It's not even close.
Seed oils are 100% a distraction. Once you're in the upper 2.3% of vo2max for your age/sex, _then_ you have the right to worry about seed oils. Until then, save your energy for interval training.
Minor in the minors, major in the majors.