What does dying from all causes mean?

Kintarian@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 111 points –

In some studies, at the end of them, I see:

"quitting smoking reduces your chance of dying from all causes."

So if I quit smoking I'm less likely to get hit by a bus?

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As a former ICU nurse I can tell you that someone who has been taking good care of their body, is fit and healthy, has a better chance of survival and less complications while recovering as someone who didn't. No matter the injury.

If you get hit by a bus and your lung is compromised it has a harder time compensating for the injury if it was already damaged.

So yes. You might have a better chance to survive a car crash if you haven't been smoking.

That's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

You might have a better chance to survive a car crash if you haven’t been smoking.

That's probably why I've survived so many car crashes.

It sounds a bit like your poor driving is the cause for you to survive so many car crashes.

But not poor enough to cause any fatal crashes. There's a driving skill sweet spot where you have maximum crash survival.

Yeah. Came here to write exactly this.

What OP misunderstood is the old tale of mortality vs. lethality.

In a simplified explanation: Mortality defines the percentage of deaths in a population by a cause.

Lethality is the percentage of deaths of people suffering from a cause.

In our case:

  • Smokers might only get hit by a bus slightly less often or slightly more often(1) (Mortality)

  • But they have a far greater chance of dying from it when they get hit. The same can be said for being shot,etc. Being a smoker always reduces your statistical chances.

(1:Actually quite fascinating - there is conflicting evidence on that one, as smoking is often statistically associated with substance abuse and bad health - which increases the likelihood of major trauma events, but on the other hand smokers die earlier,leaving more old people to walk in front of vehicles due to reduced cognitive abilities)

We must do something about all these old people getting run over by buses.

Free cigarettes! Should help reduce the number of old people getting run over by buses

Indeed is major trauma (which getting run over by a bus is a euphemism for) a much overlooked concern for older people (especially "the younger" old people, which are between 60-75).

You should ABSOLUTELY quit smoking. Also, you should stop getting hit by buses. Neither one are good for you.

Totally agree, buses suck! More to the other one, I haven't had a real cigarette since 31 July; it had been 28 years of smoking with a few short breaks scattered in.

It is insane the tastes I've tasted recently, as a die hard Dr Pepper fan I don't know if I'll be able to keep drinking it, it's just too sweet now. Quitting smoking might lead to a healthier lifestyle all around.

Congratulations on quitting smoking. I quit about 20 years ago. I tried a cigarette after being off of them for awhile. It tasted so nasty I don't know why I ever started.

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He is trying to build immunity.

Gotta start small. Get hit by e-scooters and mopeds, then move up to sedans and eventually SUVs. Starting with a bus won't be good for you at all.

Just make sure you don't develop an allergic reaction. Could happen with too much exposure

I have cut down on my bus addiction. I feel much better now.

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Yes. Everyone knows the bus comes when you light a cigarette.

One of my "modern" folk song is about exactly this phenomenon.

Edit: here it is, if someone is interested, it's an old-styled, descending, parlando rubato hungarian folk song. I noted it down using solmization.

         A
  2/4||: la,/8 mi/8 mi/8 re/8 | mi/4+ mi/8 | ti,/8 do/8 re/8 mi/8 | ti,/4 la,/4 | ti,/2* :|
         B
     ||: do/8 do/8 ti,/8 la,/8 | mi/8 re/8 do/4 | ti,/2* | do/8 do/8 do/8 re/8 | mi/8 re/8 do/8 | ti,/2* |
         C
     || so,/8 so,/8 so,/8 so,/8 | so,/4* do/8 ta,/8* | la,/2** ||

(the comma after the solmization indicates the note being in a lower octave. Plus sign after a not length value means it's dotted. Asteriks means fermata. Also, there is one strange solmization note (used in relative solmization) which I marked as "ta", it's a flat ti.)

And the lyrics (in hungarian)

"Várakozom én a százötvenegyes buszra, ( A )
Kezemben készen a sodort cigaretta, ( A )
Meg is gyújtom azon nyomban, ( B )
Szippantok belőle hosszan, ( B )
Ah, de megjött már az a busz." ( C )

Which translates to this (I used ChatGPT for the translating, told it to be a bit more... free or poetic or idk):

"Standing at the stop, the one-fifty-one in sight,
In my hand, a cigarette rolled tight.
I light it up, breathe in the smoke,
A long, deep breath, with every toke,
Ah, but now the bus is here, just right."

Lights Cigarette

Immediately assassinated by Truck-Kun

Gets Isekai Anime with Absurdly Specific Title

Profit?

How did truck-kun hit me while I was out here in international waters? Damn.

"The Time I Got Isekai'd For Smoking And Turned Into A Level 100 Smoke Demon"

I'm going to echo korimee, and add that it's statistics.

When you're tallying causes of death, like cancer, heart disease, stroke, organ failure, pathogens, whatever; if you factor in whether or not people smoke, smokers die younger from those things, and are a higher percentage of deaths like that as opposed to old age.

Non smokers get those things later, statistically, and have better chances of not only surviving, but recovering. Take stroke as an example. On average, the chances of severe disability from a stroke goes up the more risk factors you have. Smokers are less likely to survive a stroke, and if they do, have worse outcomes when they're stabilized. Then they have less resilience during the recovery process, leading to worse disability statistically.

The final question you asked only applies obliquely, and others have covered that it would only apply in limited cases. Accidental death, the uptick for smokers is essentially meaningless. For the specific "hit by a bus" kind of accidental death, distraction is how it usually happens anyway, but smokers trying to light up might have a slight extra chance of distraction, but I couldn't see any data on that with a quick DDG search

Ok, it's kind of worded weird. I guess that makes sense.

It means all causes collectively, not each and every cause individually.

Let's say you're a smoker and your workplace says you have to go outside to smoke.

It's the middle of November, it's cold, it's rainy, you're outside smoking and get pneumonia.

Your lungs are already weak from smoking and the pneumonia kills you.

If you quit smoking, you would have been inside, dry, safe, less likely to contract pneumonia and less likely to die from it if you get it.

Buses drive outside.

People tend to step outside for a smoke.

So yeah, you actually might be more likely to get hit by a bus if you smoke, your smoking spot is anywhere near a bus route, and you are ducking out there 2-4 times a day to stand there smoking while you play with your phone.

Less likely to die from being hit by a bus*

Basically yeah, obviously no. Cause of death isn't broken down nearly as far as people think it is. You can check it out on the CDC's Web portal. So while you can get the results for motor vehicle accidents, you may not get the results for motor vehicle versus pedestrian.

So all they're actually claiming is that in the statistics, people who quit smoking are less represented in every category.

Smoking makes you more visible because of the trail of smoke giving away your location - cessation makes it harder for cars to hunt you down and run you over.

Less sarcastically it's a way of saying that your overall life expectancy is increasing as it decreases the probability that you'd die from a pretty wide array of causes... that bus is going to hit you regardless of how much you smoke but it's less likely something else kills you first.

That explains why I keep getting shot while smoking in my fox hole. The enemy can see my smoke rings like a target.

It means the overall death rate in the sample group was decreased substantially. The number of people who survived because they didn't get lung cancer or blood clots was so large that it had a noticeable impact on the number of total survivors, even when you include death by bus. This is a useful measure for a couple of reasons. One, it accounts for the prevalence of the disease being prevented - cutting all pork from your diet prevents 100% of deaths by trichinosis, which accounts for like 0.00001% of deaths from all causes (completely made up numbers and example, without consulting any sources). Two, it could account for net change in survival, for a treatment or behavior that has both positive and negative effects - giving radiation therapy indiscriminately to everyone with any kind of lump might decrease rate of dying from breast cancer, but increase death "from all causes" because it causes more problems than it solves.

I guess an additional way it might be useful is if we don't yet have data on the exact mechanisms by which the treatment helps or what exactly its preventing - all we know is that we gave group A the treatment and not group B, and after 20 years there were a lot more people alive in group A, but we haven't yet found a pattern in which causes of death were most affected and how.

Thanks. I kind of feel like they should say dying from all diseases. What do I know. I'm not a scientist.

If your body is dealing with the effects of decades of smoking, it will be less effective at healing you from all ailments (including being hit by a bus), not just diseases.

My wife has stage 4 colon cancer. One thing people who don't know some who has had cancer don't understand is that you can have it for a long time before it becomes so obvious that you have it. So while she has been far more susceptible to diseases before we figured it out, she found out because she went into the first stage of sepsis due to a necrotic tumor in her uterus that got infected. Sepsis isn't a disease, it's condition. Any infection can cause sepsis so it isn't a symptom but something caused by the symptoms, an add on effect, if you will. If not treated in time, you die of septic shock. Again, septic shock isn't a disease but a condition brought on by a disease. So no, dying from all diseases does not cover everything that you can die from that cancer or emphysema or COPD can have an effect on. In my wife's case, had we waited 24 hours more, she would have likely died because her organs would have started failing due to acidosis. Again, not a disease, a condition. Even if they had been able to treat her in time, her cancer would have likely made their treatments less effective than as they would have been for someone without cancer.

Let me try to put it in better terms. A disease can create a condition which can have a negative effect on the body. This condition is not necessarily solely caused by that disease, so it isn't a symptom. This condition, like acidosis of the blood, can then go on to create further problems, like organ failures, which you can die of. So in this example, the cause of death is organ failure, not acidosis, not the disease. and not the cancer. Without the cancer, the disease might not have spread as fast or happened at all. And thus, quitting smoking improves your chances of not dying from all causes, not just all diseases.

I'm sorry you're going through that. Thank you for the answer.

Wounds heal poorly for smokers. People who smoke after getting a tooth extraction can get dry socket.

I know someone who ate some rancid food, and was subsequently very, very unwell because they literally couldn't taste or smell that it was off.

It affects your cardiovascular health so good luck outrunning danger.

Everything is worse if you smoke, in real time and in terms of what it does to your body's ability to heal or respond to trauma.

Don't smoke. And if you do, try and quit.

Your chance of dying from all causes is just your overall chance of dying.

Then they should say that unless their audience is other scientists.

*moves period three words to the left

Ready to publish!

If it was R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Philip Morris they would prepend that statement with

"A federal court has ordered Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reyolds Tobacco to state:"

I laugh every time I see that weak ass statement displayed in convenience stores.

I guess we could compare it to ageing. People clearly get more fragile when they get older, and more likely to die from all causes. The common flu or falling in the stairs suddenly pose huge risks once you're 90.

Smoking has a similar effect on you as ageing, except that it's reversible.

from every possible thing that can happen to you while smoking...

cancer while smoking COVID while smoking caught in fascist riots while smoking hit by bus while smoking bear attack while smoking container dropped from a plane while smoking etc

Smoking puts you out in the world which increases a lot of risks you wouldn't otherwise have.

I'd hate to get attacked by a smoking bear 🐻

Ok, I get it. I don't smoke or attend fascist parties so I'm good for awhile, maybe.

Thanks.

Do whatever you can to prevent forest fires and you have nothing to fear from Smoky the Bear.

You have to watch out for him. He'll wap you with that shovel!

If you gor hit by a bus your chance for recovery would be better as a non-smoker than a smoker.

I first read it as "dying for a cause". I guess cigarettes make you more revolutionary or something