Posted on 02/20/2005 5:40:53 PM PST by oldrip
At one time, 15, currently just 5.
Oh how I wish that I would have bought a bridge in New York earlier in my life as to sell it at a very large profit today.
HaHaaaaaa! Good one!
D@mn, I am forever convinced that you go to bed whenever I hit a thread! : (
It never fails....
Ahhh don't worry...........you will see her tomorrow.
The loss of entertainment could be traumatic to some of us. ; (
Thanks. :)
Then I will be in bed!!!! LoL!
Only for Newbs who behave trollish. If someone threatens to zot me, I'd take it seriously and responded immediately.
Huh? I didn't write that.
I was over at a friends house today deworming his computer and I thought about you for he has the cutest cat (Vegas) and I wanted him to take snapshots of him so I could forward them to you. He doesn't own a digital camera so he couldn't.
For ME to make comments as such about a cat makes the cat a very special feline! ; )
Cancer.org
US. Dept of Health and Human Sevices
American Red Cross
Womens Heart Advantage
Medical costs attributable to smoking comprise 6 to 9% of the total national healthcare budget.8
Every pack of cigarettes sold creates more than $7 in medical care expenses and lost productivity.3
For every smoker who quits, $1,623 is saved annually in healthcare costs alone.9
Smokers tend to have more hospital admissions, take longer to recover from illness and injury, have higher outpatient healthcare costs, and have lower birthweight babies.8
Document by Workshifts.org prepared for the State of Minnesota
So, there are a set of govermental publications backing my assertions. And what do you have? A link with allegations that attack assertions that cancer is bad. Please note that articles like that do not propose a counter-point, only blindly insist that smoking is harmless .... and one would HOPE you would be smarter than that.
Did someone say troll?
Pretty much every workplace I'm familiar with (except the small independantly owned businesses) provide smoking cessation insurance coverage. There are strong insurance benefits for doing this, as well as the health of the worker and the days missed due to smoking related illnesses.
However, very few companies provide any medical insuarance coverage for weight management programs; which we both know contribute to Diabetes, heart attacks and basically every other major organ in your body. I think in the next 20 years, there will be weight management riders placed into the mainstream corporate medical insurance fliers. And, personally given the choice between paying $20,000 to have someone get their stomach stapled, or paying $200,000 to treat a heart attack, I'll chose the $20,000 option every single time.
As for the AIDS, this is a death sentence and everyone knows it. The survival rate for AIDS patients has improved considerably over the past 20 years, and if we don't find a cure; I think we will strike a balance where a person can live with this for a near-normal life.
But, if one thinks of AIDS as a learning opportunity, do you realize how much research funded for AIDS cures; has spilled over into non-AIDS related medical breakthroughs (genetics, for example). Yes, this is off topic; but still a good thing to point out.
As for Weight and weight management, a lot of companies are now either providing a gym at work, or are paying a percentage of the membership dues to gyms in the neighborhood. My company has a "Gold's " type gym in the basement. We are free to take time off during work and hit the gym; it just means working late to get your work done. I can see a time when the company will demand that you meet some physical requirements in order to stay employed. Some companies do this already, for example SEAWORLD demands that their performing employees meet a weight standard, and provides a gym for them to work out in. Face it, a 250 lb woman can't be held over-head on water ski's with one hand.
I had five hospital admissions in the sixties to give birth,1 in 2002 for a hysterectomy.I recovered quickly.I missed no work for any of these hospitalizations because I wasn't working for the births and had retired at the time of the hysterctomy. I was very rarely out sick for the many years that I worked.
These studies never use the phrase "some smokers",it's always smokers in general.
They paint with a broad brush,come up with "facts" to suit their agenda,and then pass it off as science.
All we have to do is wait a few years and the studies will be disproved as most studies are.Just tweak the figures and voila,different results.
You are a data point of one. You are apparently one of the 'lucky ones', in that you are apparently not immediately affected by smoking (thus far).
However, I've met a girl who had her vocal cords cut out at the ripe old age of 21, because she smoked for 5 years. She's a non-smoker now. I've met 5 out of 5 emphasema patients who are now non-smokers. They are all dead now, and I can tell you that gasping for breath for 2-5 years is a lousy way to die.
You may die of other causes, because we will all admit that smoking is not a 100% certain killer. Some people tolerate it better than others. For some get cancer after 3 years, some take longer; and mysteriously some seem to live long lives despite the damage they have done to their lungs. And I think we will both acknowledge that your lungs ARE damaged. I'm over-weight; but I'll race you up a flight of stairs any time, and let's see who is gasping for air first.
But the bottom line is that given the number of smokers, and the number of cases of heart disease, lung disease, liver and kidney disease, lip, throat and mouth diseases; there is a link. And as hemoglobin bonds with CO2 even more readily than O2, this means that your blood simply can not carry the O2 to your cells as efficiently. THAT is why smokers tend to heal slower, and recover slower. The hemoglobin is simply tied up hauling CO2 from the smoke. I think we can agree that this makes sense. This is why breathing car exhaust CO (carbon Monoxide) is such an easy way to commit suicide. CO bonds to hemoglobin over 100x better than mere O2. CO2 doesn't bond as well; but bond it does. You see, hemoglobin doesn't know or care if the CO2 it picks up in your lungs came from cellular mytosis; or from the 'fresh air supply' in your lungs.
We have waited since 1964 for the findings of the US Surgeon General to be refuted; and the findings have been upheld by the medical community in each and every study ever done.
Does the tinfoil go dull side in or out?
hehe!Dull side in, I suppose. :^)
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