[peoplefromibiza]

it actually is in some way.

first of all, Worldwide, 15–20 percent of men with lung cancer are non-smokers while over 50 percent of women with lung cancer are non-smokers [1], so if you are a woman, chances are similar.

Secondly, former smokers and current smokers have similar risks of getting lung cancer.

Last, but not least, once you get it, survival rates are similar for non smokers, former smokers and current smokers (in similar groups of course).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431055/

EDIT: it is overhyped because not smoking is in the public discourse treated as a cure, but it's not, especially if you are a woman.

In USA, for example, black men have higher chances of getting lung cancer than white men, but black women risk much less than white women.

So it's like saying that being a black woman saves you from lung cancer.

Risks are expressed as probabilities, people too often don't get it.

[wlesieutre]

> Worldwide, 15–20 percent of men with lung cancer are non-smokers while over 50 percent of women with lung cancer are non-smokers

50% seems like a big number but it's a pretty meaningless statistic if women overall smoke less than men. It just means that when you have few smoking-related cancer cases, the other cases make up a larger percentage. Using that ratio to justify "you might as well smoke, 50% of women with lung cancer were non-smokers" is... not a good use of the statistics.

As a thought exercise with made up numbers, suppose that you have 10 people, 1 will naturally get lung cancer, and everyone who smokes will get lung cancer.

If 4 men smoke and get cancer, that's 5 with cancer and 1 of them was a non-smoker. 20% are non-smokers.

If 1 woman smokes and gets cancer, that's 2 with cancer and 1 of them was a non-smoker. 50% are non-smokers.

In this scenario you can say the exact same statistic about "50% of women with lung cancer are non-smokers" and brush it off as not a big deal even though 100% of smokers are getting cancer.

That's not a useful number to be looking at to judge the risk of smoking vs not smoking.

[peoplefromibiza]

> 50% seems like a big number

I don't know why I thought that linking a scientific paper reporting accurately all the data would be helpful to the discussion.

Not my opinions my friend.

> but it's a pretty meaningless statistic women overall smoke less than men

That's not how epidemiology works.

The fact that black men in USA have ~20% higher risk of getting lung cancer, despite being less than white men, says anything to you?

No, they don't smoke more.

No, risk of getting cancer is not linked to how many cigarettes you smoke in a lifetime, once a smoker, the risk gets higher and stays higher for as long as you live, even if you quit.

> even though 100% of smokers are getting cancer

they are absolutely not!

See why I say non smocking is over hyped?

Because it leads to ideology, which is not the same thing of being informed.

[wlesieutre]

> I don't know why I thought that linking a scientific paper reporting accurately all the data would be helpful to the discussion.

Right, but you cherry-picked the most uninformative statistic possible out of the whole thing to make it sound like smoking isn't a major factor.

These ones would have painted a different picture:

> In a study performed in the United States, roughly 19 percent of women with lung cancer were non-smokers, and only 9 percent of men with lung cancer were non-smokers.13 As this data has shown, lung cancer in non-smokers tends to be more common in females

> Importantly, there is also an increased risk for those non-smokers that have a spouse that is a smoker. In a meta-analysis that included 55 studies, it was found that women who were married to a smoker had a 27% increase in risk of lung cancer.

So a pretty good chunk of those non-smoker cancer cases are caused by smoking, it's just someone else's. And that 27% is just spouses who smoke, another chunk of that will be waitstaff with workplace smoke exposure (an occupation which skews female) since restaurants were one of the last public places people where kept smoking all the time. Indoor smoking bans will reduce those cases, but we're a long way yet from seeing the long terms effects of that.

> they are absolutely not!

I'm aware. As I said in my comment, that was a hypothetical scenario with made up numbers to illustrate how the 50% statistic on its own could give you the wrong impression of the safety of smoking.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Right, but you cherry-picked the most uninformative statistic possible out of the whole thing

in your opinion.

> In a study performed in the United States

I specifically wrote Worldwide, USA is only 4% of the World's population.

Who's actually cherry picking?

USA population is in particular quite shielded from all the other very numerous factors that can lead to lung cancer.

Smocking is only the most obvious and self inflicted

For example: China has the heaviest lung cancer burden, representing 36.98% of cases and 39.21% of deaths globally [1]

By choosing the USA as a reference, you're highly skewing the stats.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7797233/

> that was a hypothetical scenario with made up numbers to illustrate how the 50% statistic on its own is uninformative

so, basically, a strawman to sell opinions as facts.

[wlesieutre]

You're right, I am looking at US causes. I didn't notice you had said Worldwide, but regardless I would say the US data is more relevant to readers on this site.

But I think you're missing my broader point, which is that even living in a smoggy coal-burning area like China it's still not reasonable to say "might as well smoke, I'm already exposed to other lung cancer risks." That's like saying "My car is older and not up to modern safety standards, and I'm probably going to die in a crash anyway, so I won't wear my seat belt."

You have a risk factor that you can't do anything about, and that does push up the statistics about how many non-smokers get lung cancer, but smoking is still a pointless additional factor that will only raise your odds of getting lung cancer further.

[peoplefromibiza]

> which is that even living in a smoggy coal-burning area like China it's still not reasonable to say "might as well smoke, I'm already exposed to other lung cancer risks."

Agree, but that's not the point I am making.

The point I am making is that we know that smoking is linked to lung cancer but the opposite is not a certainty. We don't know if the smokers getting lung cancer would not get it if they did not smoke.

Unfortunately.

So it is wise to not smoke, of course, but that's only a fraction of the entire story.

People are getting cancer in the west more now than in the 60s and 70s, when smoking was vastly more spread.

The peak was in the 90s, we are slowly going back to the numbers of the mid 1970s.

We know that cancer is linked to age, so maybe an aging population has more chances of getting cancer than a younger one.

This seems to be confirmed by the fact that in USA ~5% of the population has cancer, while in large areas of Central Africa, for example Somalia, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, it's less than 0.5%.

I'm quite sure it is not due to better living conditions and less cigarettes. But another reason could be that it is not detected nor reported.

Also in USA there are ~140 deaths every 100,000 people, in Iran ~95, in Mexico is ~90, in Algeria ~75.

Just to say that we still haven't found the root cause and why there are people living the same exact life in the same exact place, one gets it and the other don't.

So, in the end, intermittent fasting has mostly the same effects of eating less in general, it shouldn't be surprising, like it shouldn't surprise anybody that a lot of people, who never smoked, still die of cancer.

A more healthy diet would have a large impact on mortality in USA, where the leading cause of death is hearth disease cause by unhealthy diets.

Especially when intermittent fasting is defined as "the other group only had access to food 9 hours a day", which is how most people eat, simply following local traditions.

[decafninja]

I’ve seen many couples where the woman is a nonsmoker but the man is a relentless chain smoker. Does second hand smoke play into this statistic?

I know second hand smoke has been downplayed in recent years, but in this case we’re not talking about occasionally being exposed to smoke, but rather sharing and breathing the same smoke filled air with a smoker.

This also seems to depend on country and culture. In some cultures, it seems most nonsmoking women would instantly disqualify a smoking man as a partner, but in others it doesn’t seem to be quite the same dealbreaker.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Does second hand smoke play into this statistic?

second hand smoke is a known risk factor.

still it doesn't explain the difference, which is rather large.

the most probable explanation is that women are more exposed or more susceptible to some other risk factor than men.

A wild guess, for example, could be: women are in charge of cooking and are exposed to the fireplace wood smoke. There are studies associating fireplace wood smoke to an increase of breast cancer. [1]

Indoor pollution is also thought to be harmful for respiratory system health.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5744698/

[seanw444]

Do people focus on lung cancer when it comes to whether they should smoke or not? I'd say the significantly reduced lung capacity and constant coughing are faster-acting, more problematic issues.

[peoplefromibiza]

agreed.

also second hand smocking, realizing that you are making the life of the people around you, especially kids, a living hell should be enough.

[mrguyorama]

Do you not know how to spell "smoking"?

[peoplefromibiza]

To be precise, as an Italian, the Italian dictionary in my browser doesn't.

But I actually don't care.

I'm quite sure my English is way better than your Italian, Spanish, some French and some German, will ever be.

[kqr]

This is not at all what I expected. Before cigarette smoking was common, I was under the impression lung cancer was extremely rare. Is there something else that gives people lung cancer these days?

[peoplefromibiza]

> Is there something else that gives people lung cancer these days?

the usual suspects

- older population, surviving the most common disease that once killed millions of people at younger age

- pollution

- toxic substances (asbestos for example)

- radiations

- exposure to highly carcinogenic substances (nickel, cadmium, radon, vinyl chloride, benzidene, and benzene, etc.)

- DNA