My girlfriend has threatened to break up with me several times now unless I cut down to a pack a week. I’m not addicted but it does help me get through my day. I keep trying to tell her that but she doesn’t believe me and keeps saying that it’s actually bad. I want to prove to my girlfriend that smoking cigarettes is actually good for you so that she can stop judging me over it but I can’t find any info online to back that up. Can anyone help me find some resources that list the health benefits of cigarettes? Like how nicotine kills germs or anything like that?
https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-3-health-effects/3-28-health-benefits-of-smoking-
There’s reason to believe there are specific benefits from smoking tobacco. It’s just that they are pretty much always outweighed by the negative effects of smoking in the long term.
From their link:
Important note: smoking may offer a limited degree of protection in some individuals against the development of a small number of diseases, outlined below.
However, this information is of little relevance to public health, given that the amount of disease that tobacco may be said to prevent is insignificant in comparison with the far greater incidence of disease caused by smoking. Tobacco products kill one in two of their long-term users.
Why don’t you just get the health benefits in other ways that don’t include cancer?
Nicotine patches are better than cigarettes and vaping.
You’re welcome.
I quit after over 20 years. It was really, really hard. I still crave them. Won’t start again, just because quitting was so incredibly difficult. But, yeah. I, uh, think about it… Both sides of it.
Be aware, I cherry picked the information you had asked for from a much larger work. Just “Chapter 3 - The health effects of active smoking” has 37 sections. Everyone but the one I linked above has a list of negative effects. Have a look at the rest of it, too.
Chapter 3 Index: https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-3-health-effects
Don’t just confirm your biases. Look at the whole picture.
Wish you the best.
When presenting the information to your girlfriend, please be completely honest and make sure to also show the Important Note that the researchers put at the front.
Important note: smoking may offer a limited degree of protection in some individuals against the development of a small number of diseases, outlined below. However, this information is of little relevance to public health, given that the amount of disease that tobacco may be said to prevent is insignificant in comparison with the far greater incidence of disease caused by smoking. Tobacco products kill one in two of their long-term users.
Half of long-term smokers die to smoking. Even if you think you can quit, the point of this study is to show that even having looked for benefits, they could only find a negligible amount of benefits compared to the harms of smoking.
