Scientists expose tobacco myths

Women’s conviction that smoking helps to control weight is a myth, as evidenced by the findings of a team of experts at University College London. During a six-year-long study the scientists followed some 3,000 children between the ages of 11 and 16 and found no differences in the weight of smoking and non-smoking teenagers.

These discoveries came as a surprise even to the researchers. Prof. Robert West of University College London says that for many years he repeated the mistaken assumption that smoking helps to control weight. The preliminary results of this study clearly indicate that young smokers are no better at controlling their weight than non- smokers.

The researchers found no differences in body weight and body fat index, the number of calories consumed, or fat content. They say that certain differences appear when smokers reach middle age and have smoked for a very long time. In this case they weigh less, but their lungs are damaged and they are at considerably higher risk of having a heart attack, stroke, and cancer.

Yet even this difference in weight is illusory. Although middle-aged veteran smokers weigh less than their non-smoking peers, the distribution of fat in their bodies deforms their figures. The study shows that the effect of nicotine on the endocrine system is such that in smokers even normal fat is spread abnormally throughout the body. Fat accumulates around the waist and upper part of the torso rather than along the thighs. This means that smokers more often register a higher waist-to-thigh ratio. One study involving almost 12,000 women aged between 40 and 73 shows that the waist-to-thigh ratio increases pro rata the number of cigarettes smoked a day.

Another sensational announcement was made by researchers at the Italian National Cancer Institute. Their findings show that after a woman quits smoking, her facial skin becomes younger by 13 years after nine months. Women who took part in the experiment were required to quit smoking and submit to tests every three months. The results were amazing: their skin was rejuvenated by an average of 13 years and they each lost several kilos.

Scientists at the Harvard Medical School in Boston came to the conclusion that quitting smoking instantly improves men’s health, and the risk of death in the next five years is 13 percent lower. These findings are the result of a long-term study of 100,000 women, which took place from 1980 to 2004.