Author: Pineapple (Founder of Pineapple Factor Public Account)
The relationship between smoking and lung cancer is very clear. 90% of lung cancers are related to smoking, and if there is no cigarette, lung cancer will be a rare cancer.
But there is a question that bothers many people: How many out of 100 people who smoke will get lung cancer? How many will die from smoking?
Is it 1%, 10% or 50%?
Image credit: Stand Cool Helo
This answer is important because every smoker comforts himself with a sentence: "So-and-so has smoked all his life and lived to be more than 90!" Although smoking is harmful, if the proportion of smoking is very low, is it not necessary to persuade people to quit smoking?
Today, Pineapple will answer this question for you.
(i)
The europeans have the most research on the effects of smoking and quitting smoking on lung cancer incidence, and several papers have similar conclusions.
In 2004, the famous British Journal of Cancer published a classic paper[1] detailing lung cancer mortality rates in different groups of men in European countries such as the United Kingdom. The result? Just look at the picture below.
Image source: Pineapple Factor
Summarizing a few articles, several conclusions are very clear:
People who do not smoke have only a 0.3% chance of dying from lung cancer at the age of 75, while those who smoke all the time are more than 50 times more likely to die of lung cancer than 16%.
If you smoke more than 5 cigarettes a day, there is a 25% chance of dying of lung cancer at age 75.
The sooner you quit smoking, the better the results. Quit smoking around the age of 30, less than 2% of them die of lung cancer, and even if they quit smoking at 50, the probability is less than 6%.
So, to answer the first question: How many people who smoke all their lives will die of lung cancer?
The answer is that 1 in 6 smokers will die of lung cancer before the age of 75, and if the scope is narrowed down to a group of more than 5 cigarettes per day, then 1 in 4 people will die of lung cancer.
Therefore, many smokers do not die of lung cancer, which is very normal.
To put it bluntly, betting on smoking or not getting lung cancer is like playing Russian roulette, with one in 6 holes, or two bullets. It's true that a lot of people don't get shot, but do you dare to pull the trigger?
The reason why I keep promoting smoking cessation is because I see tragedies like this almost every day.
Except for "Alas.....", I don't know what to say.
It's hard to quit smoking, but all people who get lung cancer have successfully quit.
Unfortunately, it's usually too late.
(ii)
If you are not afraid of the 16% to 25% probability of lung cancer, do you just smoke casually?
Of course not!
Because lung cancer is only a small part of the cause of death from smoking.
American research has found that less than 1/3 of the causes of death from smoking are due to lung cancer, which is the same high proportion as lung cancer, as well as cardiovascular diseases, including ischemic heart disease, stroke, etc., in addition to lung diseases, especially chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Roughly translate.
People who just said that people who smoke a lot have a 25% chance of dying from lung cancer caused by smoking. At this rate, these people have a 28% chance of dying from cardiovascular disease, 18% from lung disease, 7% from other cancers caused by smoking, and 9% from other diseases caused by smoking.
Add up, 25+28+18+7+9=87%!
Cigarettes, hailed as "the most murderous drug in human history," are not a waste of time.
This is the probability of being 75 years old, and what about earlier, such as 65 years old?
Looking at the data shows that smokers have a 35% chance of dying from various diseases caused by smoking at the age of 65. That is to say, although the average life expectancy is now close to 80 years old, 1/3 of people who have smoked all their lives will not live to be 65 years old.
Smoking makes people live an average of 12 years less! Senior smokers have saved a lot of medical insurance for the society, which can also be regarded as a living Lei Feng.
Remember:
There are many lucky people who smoke all their lives and can't get lung cancer, but very few people can die on their hands!
All people who get lung cancer have successfully quit smoking, but you don't have to wait until that day!
Image source: Stand Cool Helo
bibliography:
[1] The cumulative risk of lung cancer among current, ex- and never-smokers in European men. Br J Cancer. 2004 Oct 4; 91(7): 1280–1286.
[2] High Cumulative Risk of Lung Cancer Death among Smokers and Nonsmokers in Central and Eastern Europe. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Dec 15;164(12):1233-41.
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