[15.07.2007] Tobacco takes away not only the health of smokers, but also deprives them of muscle mass
Recently, the American Journal of Physiology published research results indicating that systematic tobacco use leads not only to cardiovascular diseases and cancer, but also to excessive loss of muscle mass with age.

As a result, a person's physical activity and ability for self-care decrease.
16 people aged 60 were invited as patients for the study: they were grouped by similar living conditions and habits; all consumed the same amount of alcohol and led approximately the same level of active lifestyle. Half of the group consisted of smokers who had smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years, and the other half were non-smokers.
To evaluate the intensity of metabolism in muscle tissue, they were all intravenously administered a drug containing a labeled amino acid that was incorporated into the structure of the synthesized protein. Muscle tissue samples were taken from all subjects before and after infusion: the rate of protein synthesis in muscles was proportional to the total muscle mass.
During measurement, it was found that protein synthesis in the muscles of smokers was significantly slower than in the muscles of non-smokers. Furthermore, there was a higher concentration of substances in the muscles of smokers that slowed down muscle mass growth on their own.

Do you smoke? Actually, it doesn't matter. You are either on one side of the barricades or the other anyway. For this world has long been torn apart by a war in which two armies fight—the Tobacco Leaf and the Clean Air.
Is smoking dangerous for health?
The funniest thing is that so far no one has been able to either 100% confirm that smoking is dangerous or refute this idea. Neither scientifically nor statistically. (Well, why would they—the authors and executors of the "anti-tobacco hysteria" have already decided everything for themselves!). It is reliably known that heavy (! specifically HEAVY) smokers experience a decrease in working lung volume; under exertion, their pulse increases more, and shortness of breath appears faster than in non-smokers. It is certain that smokers have an increased metabolism, which is why they gain weight worse and lose it faster (which isn't bad, by the way!). As for how dangerous these changes are to life, it currently seems impossible to judge. Because as soon as it comes to nicotine addiction, both scientists and statisticians throw up their hands. Yes, up to 70% of those dying from lung cancer are smokers or former smokers. But if you take a basic age-social-gender cross-section of such deceased (i.e., people of the same gender and age, BOTH suffering AND NOT suffering from lung cancer—it's written vaguely), it turns out that it consists of 70% former or current smokers either way.
Yes, shortness of breath when climbing to the fifth floor is not good. But on the other hand, smokers solve IQ test problems 15% faster. And they die from diabetes mellitus twice as rarely. Yes, children of smoking pregnant women are more often born underweight. However, dangerous pre-labor preeclampsia is 50% less common in female smokers and the number of cases of toxicosis is reduced by a third. Pulmonary emphysema occurs twice as often in smokers, but Alzheimer's—three times less often than Parkinson's disease.
Here—official medicine beats the gong of victory—that's it! It has been 100% established that smokers are more likely to fall victim to frostbite—their tissues resist cold worse. Proven, verified, locked in the safe! Let's fight the bad habit! But then a report from the British Medical Academy crawls up about a sharp decrease in the number of ulcerative colitis cases among smokers compared to non-smokers—no, now what kind of foul play is this!
Summary data once again show that statistics are a lying, inaccurate, and insane science. But it gets even worse when these statistics are suddenly put in order. The appearance of a medical report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on the health status of the continent's population in 1989-1990 ended in a wild scandal. Here you also need to consider that in Australia, with its centralized system of treatment centers and medical insurance, any statistical research looks much more convincing and large-scale than data from European and American centers. So, according to this report, the health of Australian smokers was generally better than the health of non-smokers or those who had quit smoking. Atherosclerotic diseases and oncology—the two main scarecrows in the fight against smoking—showed very modest results among those who, by their own account, never let the smoking sticks out of their mouths, compared to their non-smoking fellow citizens (indeed! No wonder the "fighters" ignored this report—they'd blow the whole office!).

If you consider how much money anti-nicotine lobbyists managed to pump out of government pockets at that same time for their great struggle (which could have gone toward ACTUAL funding of healthcare, fighting REAL diseases and disasters), then for such reports, their authors should have been fed to the sharks frolicking in the coastal waters of Sydney...
Compared to this bomb, one could even ignore the traditionally disgusting results of Greece (the highest percentage of smokers in Europe and simultaneously the lowest level of oncology and circulatory system diseases). What is this Greece—after all, they have sun, wine, mountain air, folk dances...
...The money going toward the fight against smoking, which is bitten off from tobacco companies and squeezed out of state budgets—these are sums with a lot of zeros. It's no wonder that such golden glitter attracts so many fervent fighters, angry orators, and passionate advocates for the happiness of mankind. People will always pay two types of citizens, as the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said: "Those who entertain them, and those who frighten them."
Of course, the scale of the entertainment show business is still larger, but the "frighteners'" business is also quite prosperous.
Hundreds of foundations successfully pocket tobacco millions, feeding doctors and journalists, politicians and public figures. Of course, one could also fight abortions, power plants, genetically modified products, bad ecology, the crisis of overproduction, car manufacturing... But in most of these cases, too powerful forces usually stand on the side of "vice," which are still quite successfully resisting such attacks. Try to properly touch those same genetically modified products—half of all US farmers will rise against you; no one is foolish enough to butt heads with such bulls. But tobacco companies turned out to be fat and appetizing enough, but at the same time too weak. Shoo them away, shoo! The successes in the fight against the devil's potion boggle the imagination—bastions are falling one after another. Smokers have been surrounded by red flags from all sides; non-smokers have been hammered with the idea that those with smoking things in their mouths are attacking your life and freedom. They are smoking out your children, and they will grow up to be stupid freaks; they deprive men of sexual potency; they jinxed your cows and dance naked on Bald Mountain! In general, old recipes (fooling the masses and finding an imaginary "enemy" for them to distract from real problems) still work well.
Convincing a modern non-smoker that a person with a cigarette at the other end of the restaurant causes him absolutely no harm is like trying to tell a pious citizen of Cologne 500 years ago that witches don't actually sour milk or ruin children in the mother's womb"...
And here are SOME more good suggestions for such "fighters":
NEW ENEMIES OF HEALTH!
1) Chair manufacturers! Because people get used to sitting on chairs, stop moving, get fat and lose their human appearance!
2) Yogurt manufacturers—EVERYONE who eats them dies sooner or later—scientifically proven!
3) Candy manufacturers—they ruin teeth, and excessive consumption causes bowel obstruction!
4) Bottled water manufacturers—because if you pour water from several such bottles into a bathtub, you can die!


I read the article for the first time in MAXIM magazine; on the internet it can be found under the title "Tobacco Nonsense"