Cigar smoking: Healthy?

[flathead59]

This article must be expressing the minority prosition on tabacco and tabacco products. You would be hard pressed to find the majority of the medical community agreeing with this. Though there are those that develop cancers from other than tobacco, most of the lung, and lip cancers are found in people that use tobacco products.


Just my two cents, the majority of the medical community is more interested in fitting in with the other white coats/financial supporters of white coats than in expressing an unpopular favorable opinion on a substance that's as easy to hate as tobacco is. Been said in this thread already, but what they're doing is substituting statistics for science.

Mark

 

[DocLogic77]

This article must be expressing the minority prosition on tabacco and tabacco products. You would be hard pressed to find the majority of the medical community agreeing with this. Though there are those that develop cancers from other than tobacco, most of the lung, and lip cancers are found in people that use tobacco products.


Just my two cents, the majority of the medical community is more interested in fitting in with the other white coats/financial supporters of white coats than in expressing an unpopular favorable opinion on a substance that's as easy to hate as tobacco is. Been said in this thread already, but what they're doing is substituting statistics for science.

Mark

I'm not so sure that's true. I truly believe most physicians look at studies and form their opinions by evidence based medicine. The problem...not alot of terrific studies have been done on cigars. So, cigars tend to get lumped in with other forms of tobacco. From the limited studies I have read...1-2 cigars/day has little to no effect on health. Take that for what it's worth.

 

[flathead59]

I'm not so sure that's true. I truly believe most physicians look at studies and form their opinions by evidence based medicine. The problem...not alot of terrific studies have been done on cigars. So, cigars tend to get lumped in with other forms of tobacco. From the limited studies I have read...1-2 cigars/day has little to no effect on health. Take that for what it's worth.

My apologies Doc, I did not mean to imply that individual doctors don't have their own opinions. What I meant was that most of the doctors we hear about are the ones that agree with the "tobacco is the devil and if nobody smoked we'd all live forever and there would be no insurance bills" cock and bull that is the norm today. The ones that agree with that line of thinking are the ones that get the press that we are exposed to.

Mark

 

[sportsmedjosh]

Most physicians I know smoke cigars at my lounge. Also a lot of the studies that medical doctors tend to do are case studies and the big ones are epidemiological studies done by public health people

 

[dpmrpa]

I'm not so sure that's true. I truly believe most physicians look at studies and form their opinions by evidence based medicine. The problem...not alot of terrific studies have been done on cigars. So, cigars tend to get lumped in with other forms of tobacco. From the limited studies I have read...1-2 cigars/day has little to no effect on health. Take that for what it's worth.

Exactly. Evidence based. If there are 20 patients that use tabacco and 17 develop lung cancer, there must be a correlation between the use of tabacco and the disease. I have seen no studies on cigar smoking but as Doclogic stated tabacco products get lumped together.

 

[DocLogic77]

My apologies Doc, I did not mean to imply that individual doctors don't have their own opinions. What I meant was that most of the doctors we hear about are the ones that agree with the "tobacco is the devil and if nobody smoked we'd all live forever and there would be no insurance bills" cock and bull that is the norm today. The ones that agree with that line of thinking are the ones that get the press that we are exposed to.

Mark

It's fine...no offense taken. There are certainly a good amount of physicians who do lump cigars into the devil tobacco category. I do think the problem is the lack of studies. We need some significant and well done studies published in large medical journals to change some of that thinking.

 

[DocLogic77]

Most physicians I know smoke cigars at my lounge. Also a lot of the studies that medical doctors tend to do are case studies and the big ones are epidemiological studies done by public health people

My cigar smoking career was started by my attending physician during training. The majority of the docs at the party indulged from time to time.

 

[flathead59]

[

Exactly. Evidence based. If there are 20 patients that use tabacco and 17 develop lung cancer, there must be a correlation between the use of tabacco and the disease. I have seen no studies on cigar smoking but as Doclogic stated tabacco products get lumped together.

Once again, statistics, not science. What other risk factors do the 17 share? A weekend home on Three Mile Island? Do they work as crop dusters spraying herbicides? Family histories? Stress from worrying constantly about dying?

Mark

 

[dpmrpa]

Once again, statistics, not science. What other risk factors do the 17 share? A weekend home on Three Mile Island? Do they work as crop dusters spraying herbicides? Family histories? Stress from worrying constantly about dying?

Mark

Agreed but it starts with what they all have in common. I am not a researcher but when I take a history and physical from a patient there are common symptoms that fit a disease process. When you find similar pathology that lead to the same disease........:clap: you can then determine that with these symptoms you probably have this disease. You are right within the H&P, there are areas that can include crop duster and 3 mi. isle.:thumbsup: Those items can also be contributing factors.

 

[DocLogic77]

Once again, statistics, not science. What other risk factors do the 17 share? A weekend home on Three Mile Island? Do they work as crop dusters spraying herbicides? Family histories? Stress from worrying constantly about dying?

Mark

That's why correlation studies are considered weak.

 

[flathead59]

Agreed but it starts with what they all have in common. I am not a researcher but when I take a history and physical from a patient there are common symptoms that fit a disease process. When you find similar pathology that lead to the same disease........:clap: you can then determine that with these symptoms you probably have this disease. You are right within the H&P, there are areas that can include crop duster and 3 mi. isle.:thumbsup: Those items can also be contributing factors.

Agreed but it starts with what they all have in common. I agree with you on this one, with limits. Showing that they all had one risk factor in common proves only that they had one risk factor in common. Since you can't prove a negative, and show that something specifically didn't cause the cancer, the immediate assumption is that public enemy number one did. There's nothing we fear more than the unknown. So rather than saying that "well, there could have been about 7,461 contributing factors to this person's death", we want to hear "smoking caused it", or "eating red meat caused it", or "bathing in goats milk caused it". That way we can feel secure, because we don't smoke, eat red meat or bathe in goats milk.

Mark

 

[sportsmedjosh]

This is what I like to call the tyranny of public health

 

[cvm4]

It all comes down to doing things in moderation. If you drink too much alcoholic beverages, you will suffer liver disease. And so on, and so on!

Exactly...Although I'm more of a 1-3 cigars a week kind of guy. Mainly on the weekend :smokingco

 

[Mitch]

I believe the body of evidence shows that cigars in limited amounts (1-2 per day) have very little effect on overall health. In reference to that article...to prescribe 3 cigars a day? Ehh...I'm going to have to call bullshit on that one.

Good call Doc, seems BS is what it seems to be.

Here is the publication in whole, it does not prescribe cigar smoking as a safe alternative to any other tobacco. Read for yourselves.

http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/TCRB/monographs/9/m9_complete.PDF

 

[smokinghole]

Not that I'm going to listen to that Doctor's rec. on three cigars per day. It may only be a temporary treatment and not a everyday for your remaining years type of treatment he is working on.