Comment by arcticbull
2 years ago
Speaking of smoking, it's been shown to have a significant impact on obesity. In that, it dramatically lowers your body weight because it increases your energy expenditure and decreases your hunger. Nicotine is a stimulant. As soon as you stop taking nicotine, your BMI is going up. The delta between smoker and non-smoker BMI in this study was 1.5kg/m^2 [1]
The article argues that the median increase in BMI over time was 0.05kg/m^2/yr. The prevalence of smoking starting in the 80s dropped from 60% to 10%. So smoking rate is going to account for a non-trivial amount of the increased median BMI. In fact, the rate of obesity really started skyrocketing in 1980 which is right when we hit peak cigarette in the US.
If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.
Makes sense when you consider bupropion, a nicotinic receptor antagonist, shows statistically significant weight loss (clinically signifiant when combined with naltrexone). It’s like 60% of the population was on bupropion.
If it’s just to lose weight then you’re probably better off with ozempic than a pack of American Spirits.
Also I dislike the article's use of BMI over very long timescales, going back to the 1800s. BMI is fine for most people these days (because most people have a lot of weight on them, see the article) but a lot of the 1800s BMI gain was probably just due to better nutrition not higher fat percentages. Over long time horizons we probably want to measure waist-to-height ratio or body fat percentages. The 1890s BMI delta was probably all lean mass, and good-to-neutral whereas the 1990s BMI delta was probably all fat mass and overwhelmingly bad. I’d argue that probably continued until 1940 where the thinnest 10% begin to remain constant, having their basic nutrition needs saturated.
tl;dr: it's almost certainly not seed oils — and maybe not smoking is making us fat? I’m gonna look for a trend a write up a blog post haha.
If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.
the negative health effects of smoking negates the weight loss . despite being slimmer, smokers die 10 years earlier compared to the general population. obese people only lose a few years (1-3 years for moderately obese men).
Moreover the obesity effect is mostly counteracted by exercise. (Of course being obese makes it harder to exercise)
I'm definitely not proposing that people should smoke, lol.