Oncology

Smoking Cut Back

If you smoke or know someone who smokes, which is just about all of us, you know how difficult it is to quit smoking.
But what about cutting back, reducing the number of cigarettes one smokes each day as a first step towards quitting smoking? Does that lower your risk of getting lung cancer and other illnesses?
To use a sports analogy, there are those who would argue—and there’s a new study to back this up-- that trying to cut back instead of quitting smoking, is similar to hoping you only lose by one touchdown rather than 3. However some researchers maintain that the only real way to win over cigarettes would be to completely kick the habit.

But another study just released says that cutting back is of significant benefit, and can be looked at as a minor victory in the struggle to quit smoking.

Another study, in the British journal Tobacco Control, says there is no safe level of smoking, and that even so called “light” smokers face similar diseases to heavier smokers. Smoking just one to four cigarettes a day almost triples a person’s risk of dying from heart disease.

Dr. Len Horovitz, pulmonary expert at Lenox Hill Hospital, says, “The risk of heart disease doesn’t change whether you cut down or remain a heavy smoker. That is an important message because you won’t reduce your risk of heart disease unless you quit smoking entirely.”

Studies also show that smoking one to four cigarettes a day increases the risk of dying from lung cancer. The authors say the only way that smokers can reduce their risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, and other killers is to quit smoking completely.

“You can reduce your smoking consumption, you can cut it down by 50 percent, but you’re only lowering your risk by only a quarter. It is necessary to quit smoking completely,” states Dr. Horovitz.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that heavy smokers—meaning more than 15 cigarettes per day--can reduce their risk of lung cancer if they decrease smoking by 50 percent.

Dr Horovitz disagrees. “It’s not ok to be a light smoker. There is no such thing as safe smoking,” Dr. Horovitz believes.

Perhaps what is needed is a more realistic approach to quitting smoking. Despite efforts to prevent people from beginning smoking and to encourage smoking cessation, the overall prevalence of cigarette smoking is still high and many smokers are unable or unwilling to completely quit smoking.

But Dr. Horovitz argues every smoker should try to quit, even if at first they don’t succeed. “If you’ve quit for even a few weeks at a time or a few months at a time, every time you go around the turnstile your chance of succeeding increases. So it’s important to keep trying,” advises Dr. Horovitz.

One author in JAMA notes that those patients who cannot quit smoking despite all efforts should be strongly encouraged to cut down on their cigarette consumption as much as possible, since doing so will significantly decrease their risk of lung cancer.

But if you do it correctly, under a doctor’s guidance, you can have a great shot at eventually quitting smoking, and never picking up a cigarette again.

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