{"id":4056,"date":"2019-10-23T06:23:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T06:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=4056"},"modified":"2019-10-23T06:23:42","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T06:23:42","slug":"light-smoking-still-damages-lungs-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=4056","title":{"rendered":"Light smoking still damages lungs: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New Delhi, <\/strong>\u00a0People who smoke fewer than five cigarettes a day cause long-term damage to their lungs, according to a new research.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many people assume that smoking a few cigarettes a day isn&#8217;t so bad, but it turns out that the difference in loss of lung function between someone who smokes five cigarettes a day versus two packs a day is relatively small,&#8221; said study lead author Elizabeth Oelsner, Assistant Professor at Columbia University Vagelos College in the US.<\/p>\n<p>For the study publsihed in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, the researchers looked specifically at lung function&#8211;the amount of air a person can breathe in and out&#8211;in smokers, ex-smokers, and never-smokers.<\/p>\n<p>Lung function declines naturally with age (starting in one&#8217;s 20s), and it&#8217;s well-known that smoking accelerates the decline.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the large number of people in the study&#8211;more than 25,000&#8211; researchers could see differences in lung function among light smokers (less than 5 cigarettes per day) and heavy smokers (more than 30 per day) that other studies have been unable to detect.<\/p>\n<p>Their analysis found that lung function in light smokers declines at a rate much closer to that of heavy smokers, as compared to non-smokers.<\/p>\n<p>This means that a light smoker could lose about the same amount of lung function in one year as a heavy smoker might lose in nine months.<\/p>\n<p>The study also tested an assumption, based on a 40-year-old study, that the rate of decline in lung capacity &#8220;normalises&#8221; within a few years of quitting smoking.<\/p>\n<p>The new study shows that although lung capacity declines at a much lower rate in ex-smokers than current smokers, the rate doesn&#8217;t normalise for at least 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, light smokers may have a greater risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi, \u00a0People who smoke fewer than five cigarettes a day cause long-term damage to their lungs, according to a new research. &#8220;Many people assume that smoking a few cigarettes a day isn&#8217;t so bad, but it turns out that the difference in loss of lung function between someone who smokes five cigarettes a day [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4058,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions\/4058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}