Does switching to light cigarettes offer any protection? Cutting back on how much you smoke? Here’s the latest research.
While smoking tobacco damages the body in various ways—for example, it increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, bladder cancer, and even erectile dysfunction—the most direct effects -of smoking are on the lungs. Smoking increases the risk of nearly every lung disorder and causes most cases of lung cancer, which kills more than 150,000 Americans each year.
Despite these health risks, nearly a quarter of Americans still smoke. If you’re one of them, don’t get taken in by the following myths.
Myth #1: Smoking light cigarettes is better for your health than smoking regular cigarettes.
Fact: Smoking light cigarettes is no healthier than regular cigarettes. The milder taste and smoother feel of light, ultralight, or low-tar cigarettes often convince smokers that these products are less dangerous than regular cigarettes. But studies show that smokers of light and regular cigarettes are exposed to the same amounts of nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, and other dangerous chemicals.
Even though light and low-tar cigarettes have lower levels of nicotine and other chemicals when tested with smoking machines, in real life, smokers compensate for the lower levels of these chemicals in several ways: They tend to smoke more cigarettes, take deeper or more frequent puffs, or cover the ventilation holes in filters to increase the amount of smoke they inhale.
Myth #2:Cutting down on smoking will improve health.
Fact: There is no safe level of smoking. Many smokers try to smoke fewer cigarettes per day to reduce the health risks associated with smoking, such as cardiovascular disease. But the results of a study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research showed that two-pack-per-day smokers who cut their habit to one pack a day had similar amounts of dangerous chemicals in their urine, blood, and expired breath as they did before they cut back 24 weeks earlier.
Another study, published in the same journal, found that smokers who cut the number of cigarettes smoked per day by 50% improved on some measures of heart disease risk—such as high density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good”) cholesterol levels—after two years, but not on measures of lung health—like forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC).
Quitting Smoking
Because there is no way to continue smoking and significantly reduce the health risks of tobacco use, quitting smoking entirely is the only way to improve your health. While some smokers are able to quit smoking on their own, the chances of success are greatest when using a combination of smoking cessation counseling, nicotine replacement therapy, and bupropion (Zyban, a nicotine-free medication that can decrease your craving for cigarettes).
