While some people with ulcerative colitis take up smoking in hopes of relieving their symptoms, tobacco has no positive impact on this disease, say researchers.
Ulcerative colitis is a inflammatory bowel disease chronic characterized by a fine ulceration of the internal mucosa of the large intestine. The inflammation begins in the lower part of the colon, just above the anus, before progressing upwards. The patient suffers from observable rectal bleeding in the stools and diarrhea accompanied by painful abdominal cramps.
When the body struggles to maintain normal bowel function, very painful constipation can also occur. But because ulcerative colitis is a systemic disease, it can affect other parts of the body and also lead to fever, eye or joint inflammation, mouth ulcers, or tender, inflamed nodules on the shins. Thus, the symptoms of this disease are excruciatingly painful.
Since smokers are less likely to develop this disease, some sufferers take up cigarettes in the hope of relieving their pain. Therefore, researchers wanted to determine “the impact of smoking and subsequent smoking cessation on clinical outcomes” of ulcerative colitis. Race results: tobacco has no beneficial effect on this disease, according to their study published in the journal Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
“Patients with ulcerative colitis should be advised against smoking”
The researchers followed 6,754 patients suffering from a colon ulcer. They separated them into those who had never smoked, those who had ever smoked and those who still smoked according to the status reported two years before the diagnosis of the disease. Then, “we compared the rates of overall use of corticosteroids (medicines used to treat inflammatory conditions, NLDR), flare-ups requiring corticosteroids, corticosteroid dependence, thiopurine use (thiopurine-based drugs are also used to relieve inflammatory diseases, Editor’s note), hospitalization and colectomy (surgical operation which corresponds to the removal of the colon, Editor’s note) between these groups”, explain the researchers.
Results: Of the 6,754 patients diagnosed with ulcerative colitis during the study period, smokers had the same risk of developing rash requiring corticosteroids. They had the same dependence on these drugs and had similar rates of hospitalization and colostomy compared to non-smokers.
Also, because quitting smoking did not make the disease worse, the risks associated with smoking outweigh the benefits. “We found no benefit of smoking in ulcerative colitis. We hope our study will give people with ulcerative colitis the confidence to avoid smoking and thus improve their overall health,” says the paper’s lead author. , Jonathan Blackwell, BMBS, of St. George’s Healthcare NHS Trust and St. George’s University, London, recalling that this is the largest study ever carried out on the subject. “Patients with ulcerative colitis should be discouraged from smoking,” say the researchers.
Tobacco is the cause of 16 cancers
Since inhaled smoke from a cigarette contains more than 4000 chemical compounds, including more than 50 carcinogens, the harmful effects of smoking are innumerable. First of all, remember that tobacco, because of the nicotine it contains, is a drug. It has a physical hold on the smoker, relieving him of the withdrawal symptoms that he himself has put in place, but also a psychological one. Indeed, each time a smoker takes a cigarette, he unconsciously associates the well-being that this puff brings him to what he is experiencing at that moment, regardless of the situation.
As for the negative impact on health, it is colossal. Smoking is the cause of 16 cancers (especially lung cancer) or one third of all cancer cases. it causes 21 chronic diseases, including asthma, diabetes and erectile dysfunction, to name the best known. Smokers are also more likely to develop or worsen psychological problems such as anxiety, depression or nervousness. Finally, tobacco also causes the skin to age prematurely and, in addition to reducing the quality of life (sleep disorders, difficult physical exertion), it reduces life expectancy by ten years.
In France, country of cigarettes par excellence, there are 11.5 million daily smokers. Each year, smoking is considered responsible for more than 78,000 premature deaths in France and half of tobacco victims die between the ages of 35 and 69. Despite these maddening figures, more than 44 billion cigarettes are sold in the country each year and the State receives approximately 10.5 billion euros in taxes equivalent to the social cost of tobacco borne by the community.
But all may not be lost since, according to the Nicorette website, a company that aims to help people quit smoking, 750,000 people give up this toxic habit for at least a year every year in France. That’s more than 2,000 people a day. A record in this area has even been established in recent years since, according to the latest Health Barometer published at the end of May, France has now lost 1.6 million smokers in barely two years.
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