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Worse For Your Health Than Smoking Cigarettes
When scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., compared the dangers of cigarette smoking with the toxic effects of secondhand smoke, they found that in some circumstances secondhand smoke can hurt your health more than directly smoking a cigarette.
Extreme danger comes when you are seriously overweight and are obese. The researchers found that first- and secondhand smoke alter the actions of enzymes in the body that change how the liver and lungs function. The end result: life-threatening physiological developments.
“Our research shows that smoking and obesity together may pose a triple health threat in addition to the increased risks for heart disease, cancer and diabetes,” says researcher Aaron Wright, Ph.D., who reported on the study to the American Chemical Society. “That dangerous combination impacts key mechanisms by which both the lung and liver perform metabolism. For example, the body’s ability to metabolize prescription drugs may be altered in ways that could make standard dosages too high or too low to be effective in obese people who are exposed to tobacco smoke.”
In some cases, cigarette smoke rendered the function of important enzymes 100 times less effective. And for several instances, secondhand smoke had a more pronounced effect on the activity of enzymes than active smoking.
Wright warns that people should maintain a normal weight and avoid cigarette smoke. He adds that pharmaceutical companies need to consider both cigarette smoke exposure and obesity in drug research.