I was speaking with a heart specialist yesterday. I've been having some nasty heart palpitations, and after a lot of tests with weird electrodes it turns out I've been drinking way too much coffee.
He was talking about caffeine, alcohol and tobacco and how they affect different people in different ways.
During his very long speech he told me that doctors all know the damage that cigarettes do, but what they don't know is why only fifteen percent of smokers develop lung diseases.
I was quite stunned by that revelation. I do know that a lot of smokers do it all their life without problems, despite the antis trying to make us believe that all smokers die of lung cancer, but I thought the percentages would be a lot higher than that.
And that comes from a heart doctor.
9 Comments:
That's your problem.
I find that tobacco fact interesting.
I went to my doctor yesterday for the first time in 5 years. He asked about smoking (as they always do, the idiots), and I told him I smoked about 3 a day. He laughed and said that I may as well give up then.
I replied that I would the moment people like him stopped nagging. He didn't like that but I thought I was being nice, I usually say that I will on the day that the health service stop killing people.
The fact he will refuse to comprehend though, is that my walk to the surgery - along a dual carriageway and then a busy urban road - pumped more shit in my lungs than the 30 puffs (at a guess) on three cigarettes. And that was just part of the poison I would have inhaled that day.
We have to get out of this idea of thinking that doctors are somehow extremely clever. Their stance on smoking proves that they're far from it.
I told him that if he would state that alcohol was causing my problem then I would quit. If he was just asking me a stock question then I wouldn't
He said, in a roudnabout way, that it was just a stock question.
I smoked for 37 years and gave up 4 years ago. My chest is clear and any breathing problems have cleared up. I'm hoping I am one of the 85%. But I am not an anti-smoker. You crack on, mate.
Bloody Aberlour.
Richard - Yeah it surprised me, so it did. Decaff is pants though but I don't mind the hippie herbal stuff.
"The bottom line is that (largely thanks to their ignorance and bad prescribing habits) doctors now kill far more people than cigarettes.
Sadly, that isn't going to change.
Indeed, things are going to get much, much worse before they get better."
http://www.vernoncoleman.com/main.htm
I wonder if you stand a much better chance with private healthcare than the NHS?
The lefties complain that private healthcare is only about the money, but back in communist Russia, when the surgeons were paid the same as the factory workers, most of them were pissed on duty and the standard of care was appalling.
I would rather put my trust in someone whose livelihood depended on doing a good job.
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