Surprise! Cigarettes Are Even Worse For You Than You Thought
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Everyone who's ever seen one of the CDC's horrifying anti-smoking commercials knows cigarettes are bad for you, but here are a few more diseases to add to the list of maladies smoking can cause: breast cancer, prostate cancer, kidney failure, liver damage and pretty much all types of infections.
New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found numerous diseases typically not linked to smoking can actually be brought on by cigarettes.
The research pooled data from various studies and involved nearly 1 million me and women 55 and older. The participants were followed for 11 years and were adjusted for various factors such as age, race and daily alcohol consumption.
"Overall, approximately 17% of the excess mortality among current smokers was due to associations with causes that are not currently established as attributable to smoking," the researchers write.
Those diseases include the aforementioned, and the researchers are now calling for scientists to also take them into account when investigating the "mortality burden of smoking."