An MSN Money article by Jay MacDonald about the cost of cigarettes and lesser vices included comments from ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava:
Alcohol, long reviled as "demon rum," has been enjoying a new respectability lately thanks to medical studies that show that a little tippling can be good for the heart.
"Ethanol in and of itself makes platelets, the clotting factors in blood, less sticky, so you decrease the possibility they will clog arteries," says Dr. Ruth Kava, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health.
Kava says the operative word is moderation.
"I don't see a health reason to quit if you are drinking one to two drinks a day for a man or one drink a day for a woman," she says. "You're doing something there that could actually reduce your health-care costs down the line, as long as you don't go overboard"...
By now, no rational human would put a cigarette between his lips, so comprehensive are the health arguments against it. Among our three vices, Kava says, "The biggest threat is going to be smoking, without a doubt."
While the morbidity rates for cigarettes and cancer grab most of the headlines, Kava says they only scratch the surface of the toll tobacco takes on the populace.
"The area of concern that I think is not played up enough are the chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases like emphysema," she says. "That's sort of hideous; people don't really have enough breath to do much of anything. As a society, we seem to pay a lot more attention to cancer, but in terms of debilitating diseases, emphysema ranks way up there."
The problem isn't the nicotine, she says, although it is addictive and can increase the heart rate and slightly elevate blood pressure; the bigger threats are in the tars and toxins, including carbon monoxide, that get inhaled and absorbed into the bloodstream.
"I would rather see somebody with a lifelong addiction to nicotine use something like the patch or lozenges or nasal sprays with nicotine for the rest of their lives if they can just quit smoking," she says. "That's a much better tradeoff for reducing the risk of these very serious diseases. Just about anything is better than smoking tobacco"...
"I don't really see any health consequences down the road from a reasonable intake of caffeine," admits Kava. "If you can afford Starbucks and that's your favorite caffeinated choice, I don't see any reason not to have one in the morning, although you might consider nonfat milk in place of whole."
See also: ACSH's site http://TheScooponSmoking.org and our articles on the alternative of smokeless tobacco as a means of harm reduction for inveterate smokers.
