FYI on a bird flu vaccine...

I wanted you to be aware of this possibility...please read the comment at the bottom.
I have been following this story and some of the other interviews with the kids affected are heartbreaking. It's hard enough to handle as an adult...those teens feel like their whole world has collapsed. Be wary!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/07/us-glaxo-narcolepsy-fda-idUSBRE9261D520130307?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

Thank you ferret. I have warned people for years about the dangers of vaccines, to no avail. In fact one such warning was on TOB where they booted me off for even mentioning it.

Thimerosal (mercury), etc. etc. etc. Stuff you wouldn't even give to your pet in their rabies vaccine if you knew about it.

We are a no vaccine household. I might add, on the very bright side, that a group of Doc's. who smoKed told me that the tar etc. protected your lungs. Anecdotal evidence however when my D.H. quit after 50 years of smoking he got really sick up there in Canadalandia. Could have been bird flu, nobody ever came up with a diagnosis, however the fluoroquinolone worked. He started smoking again very shortly after returning here in a wheelchair, and has rarely been sick since.

E-raq,

I, too, am a smoker. I would say a heavy smoker.

The notion that cigarette tar coating the lungs represents any sort of protection from anything is (pun intended) a pipe dream.

My late father died directly as a result of his lungs being coated from tar from years of smoking (and inhaling) cigars. Twenty years off them didn't help, killed him anyway. Pathologist described his lungs as looking like wood under glass. The lungs need to be uncoated to function properly, any sort of coating prevents them from doing what thet are designed to do.

Axixic wrote:E-raq,

I, too, am a smoker. I would say a heavy smoker.

The notion that cigarette tar coating the lungs represents any sort of protection from anything is (pun intended) a pipe dream.

My late father died directly as a result of his lungs being coated from tar from years of smoking (and inhaling) cigars. Twenty years off them didn't help, killed him anyway. Pathologist described his lungs as looking like wood under glass. The lungs need to be uncoated to function properly, any sort of coating prevents them from doing what thet are designed to do.

That is what I have always heard too. If we needed our lungs to be coated, we should all go to work in coal mines. We know the effects of that and how that worked out for miners.

My father smoked 3 packs a day. He was in the oil burner and heating business and cleaned boilers including punching tubes (pipes) in Industrial boilers that yielded barrels full of soot. He came down with Lung Cancer at 71 y/o and died.

So keep smoking and keep those airways clogged up!

John,

Cancer is different. It is a change that occurs at a cellular level. I am talking about simple function - the "mechanical level", if you will.

Lungs cannot perform their primary function if they are coated in a foreign substance. Whether that failure to function contributes in any way to changes at a cellular level is doubtful and, frankly, counter-intuitive.

And irrelevant, actually. All smokers are aware that their lungs no longer function at optimal, we realize it whenever we climb stairs or undertake any activity that calls on the lungs to work at optimum.

Well, if you're a heavy smoker, I still think you could stop smoking with all the smoking aids there are and will power. My partner was not a heavy smoker and he stopped smoking 6 years ago on New Years eve and never had another craving or lit up again. He didn't gain weight either, but he walks 4 miles every day.

John,

I drive way too fast to worry about my smoking.

Axixic wrote:E-raq,

I, too, am a smoker. I would say a heavy smoker.

The notion that cigarette tar coating the lungs represents any sort of protection from anything is (pun intended) a pipe dream.

My late father died directly as a result of his lungs being coated from tar from years of smoking (and inhaling) cigars. Twenty years off them didn't help, killed him anyway. Pathologist described his lungs as looking like wood under glass. The lungs need to be uncoated to function properly, any sort of coating prevents them from doing what thet are designed to do.

Did he live in Toronto? A pathologist can not visually tell the difference between a lung coated with tar and one coated with air pollution. BTW I have read pathology reports on this. One of my former colleagues who was also a smoker stated, and he was a damned fine researcher, that living at the corner of Bay and Queen was the equivalent of smoking 3 packs a day. I smoke 1 pack, occasionally 2 while under stress.

Axixic wrote:John,

I drive way too fast to worry about my smoking.

Hahahaha, ditto, and I fight too hard, and as one woman said when asked if she didn't think cigarettes were going to kill her, "well I certainly hope so, it beats other forms of death and in the meantime is a pleasant pastime."

E-raq wrote:
Did he live in Toronto? A pathologist can not visually tell the difference between a lung coated with tar and one coated with air pollution. BTW I have read pathology reports on this. One of my former colleagues who was also a smoker stated, and he was a damned fine researcher, that living at the corner of Bay and Queen was the equivalent of smoking 3 packs a day. I smoke 1 pack, occasionally 2 while under stress.

Now that's a valid point - the pathologist may have just assumed that what he was seeing was the result of smoking. And yes, we lived in Toronto for many years.

But the larger issue is, I think, that a foreign substance coating the lungs -whatever its source - will interfere with their normal functioning and is never a good thing.

E-raq wrote:

Axixic wrote:E-raq,

I, too, am a smoker. I would say a heavy smoker.

The notion that cigarette tar coating the lungs represents any sort of protection from anything is (pun intended) a pipe dream.

My late father died directly as a result of his lungs being coated from tar from years of smoking (and inhaling) cigars. Twenty years off them didn't help, killed him anyway. Pathologist described his lungs as looking like wood under glass. The lungs need to be uncoated to function properly, any sort of coating prevents them from doing what thet are designed to do.

Did he live in Toronto? A pathologist can not visually tell the difference between a lung coated with tar and one coated with air pollution. BTW I have read pathology reports on this. One of my former colleagues who was also a smoker stated, and he was a damned fine researcher, that living at the corner of Bay and Queen was the equivalent of smoking 3 packs a day. I smoke 1 pack, occasionally 2 while under stress.

Wrong again!!! Toronto is far from polluted. It doesn't even show in The top 25 Most Polluted Cities in the World". Google it!

Axixic, I suggest you have a look at The Forces website about all the good things cigarettes actually do for you. There ¡s also a book written by a doctor on this subject some time back, but I think I lost the bookmark. These are honest to god scientific studies. Let me know if you can't find them and I'll post a link. Still on my first cup of coffee and not at all ready to go looking for anything except an ashtray.

E-raq wrote:Axixic, I suggest you have a look at The Forces website about all the good things cigarettes actually do for you. There ¡s also a book written by a doctor on this subject some time back, but I think I lost the bookmark. These are honest to god scientific studies. Let me know if you can't find them and I'll post a link. Still on my first cup of coffee and not at all ready to go looking for anything except an ashtray.

Smoking is just sooooo wonderful!!!
Here's the "good" things smoking does:

Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking (from CDC Website)

Overview
Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Smoking causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general.
Smoking and Death
Smoking causes death.
• The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, each year in the United States.2,3
• More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.2,4
• Smoking causes an estimated 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women.1
• An estimated 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking.1
Smoking and Increased Health Risks
Compared with nonsmokers, smoking is estimated to increase the risk of—
• coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times,1,5
• stroke by 2 to 4 times,1,6
• men developing lung cancer by 23 times,1
• women developing lung cancer by 13 times,1 and
• dying from chronic obstructive lung diseases (such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema) by 12 to 13 times.1

Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease
• Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.1
• Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries) and puts smokers at risk of developing peripheral vascular disease (i.e., obstruction of the large arteries in the arms and legs that can cause a range of problems from pain to tissue loss or gangrene).1,7
• Smoking causes abdominal aortic aneurysm (i.e., a swelling or weakening of the main artery of the body—the aorta—where it runs through the abdomen).1
Smoking and Respiratory Disease
• Smoking causes lung cancer.1,2
• Smoking causes lung diseases (e.g., emphysema, bronchitis, chronic airway obstruction) by damaging the airways and alveoli (i.e., small air sacs) of the lungs.1,2
Smoking and Cancer

Smoking causes the following cancers:1
• Acute myeloid leukemia
• Bladder cancer
• Cancer of the cervix
• Cancer of the esophagus
• Kidney cancer
• Cancer of the larynx (voice box)
• Lung cancer
• Cancer of the oral cavity (mouth)
• Pancreatic cancer
• Cancer of the pharynx (throat)
• Stomach cancer

Smoking and Other Health Effects
Smoking has many adverse reproductive and early childhood effects, including increased risk for—
• infertility,
• preterm delivery,
• stillbirth,
• low birth weight, and
• sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).1,8

Smoking is associated with the following adverse health effects:
• Postmenopausal women who smoke have lower bone density than women who never smoked.
• Women who smoke have an increased risk for hip fracture than women who never smoked.

What about drinking alcohol? Any positive reinforcements there? They say 1 in 5 people suffer from fatty liver but it's often caused by obesity., not drinking.

Ms Mac wrote:What about drinking alcohol? Any positive reinforcements there? They say 1 in 5 people suffer from fatty liver but it's often caused by obesity., not drinking.

You're correct and there are lots of alcoholics at Lakeside.

There was a discussion on TV this morning about increasing health premiums for smokers. Since they cost the health care system a ton of money than us non smokers. I'm all for it. Maybe 10 - 15% a year extra premium sounds good to me.

Ms Mac wrote:What about drinking alcohol? Any positive reinforcements there? They say 1 in 5 people suffer from fatty liver but it's often caused by obesity., not drinking.

Bang on the money Ms. Mac. Alcohol in reasonable quantities is very good for you indeed. It is a vasodilator, so if you smoke, drinking would offset the vasoconstrictive effects of the cigs.