It mentioned the heart attack decrease after the smoking ban which has been totally debunked. For heart studies the "gold standard" is the "Framingham (MA) heart study. Started in 1948 with almost 5200 people representative of the adult population of Framingham, MA. It's 60 years old this year now studying three generations. The original group was almost 60% women.
Just after WWII the majority of men smoked but far fewer women did. The age of charter participants in 1948 ranged from 20 to 75 so they would be 80 to 135 today. Obviously the charter group members have mostly died. The questionnaires asked about smoking by the person or by others in household. The study now follows a large number of the children and grandchildren of the 1948 charter participants. If those 20 year olds had a child that year the child would now be 60. This is a longitudinal study "on steroids". Death and autopsy are the ultimate medical diagnostic tool and obviously most of the charter participants have passed on.
Because of the length and size of the study it should answer two questions about secondhand smoke. #1: Comparing the non-smoking wives of smokers and non-smokers. #2: The effects on children in both household groups. Assuming most women had children back then before age 30 almost all children should be at least 50 by now. In short the Framingham study seems like the ideal source to look for the effects of second hand smoke.
I downloaded the 750 page Surgeon General's 2006 report on second hand smoke. Oh my gosh! The index has no reference to to the Framingham study. I did a keyword search on "Framingham" and it came up blank. No mention. I first heard of the Framingham study in grade school. I really hadn't looked into it before now. It should be a "goldmine" for information on secondhand smokes effect. Gosh darn! Do you think the Surgeon General has never heard of the Framingham study? I have and I don't even "play doctor" (well except for some after the bar situation on which it would be inappropriate to elaborate on).
Also, I spent a few minutes at the American Heart Association reading about heart attacks and their symptoms. They are very generalized and vague. In the Framingham study 25% of heart attacks were without symptoms and were discovered by comparing annual EKG's! I had an EKG in 1995 and another in 2000 when I dislocated my shoulder. I suggested that the doctors compare the two and everything seemed good. In that five years I probably had 1,000 incidents that matched the AHA symptoms for a potential heart attack. I was working nights and drinking a lot of coffee so figure a lot of "heartburn". In the eight years have only been to the doctor for a bad knee. The point is that an actual heart attack is extremely hard to diagnose, especially a minor one. An EKG helps but it's a lot harder without a baseline (when was the last time you had an EKG?). There are blood chemicals that rise from tissue death but was it the heart or that lifting that gave out a "Charlie horse" cramp? Both kill tissue but standard muscle tissue repairs far better than heart tissue does.
Cardiologists, like highway patrol troopers see the "train wrecks" so they are driven to keep us off the "primrose path". If you came in fearing a heart attack this is one time you might "get religious" and mend your ways before you have a real accident or heart attack. This is good in many ways. If you want to get really technical a "true heart attack" is actual destruction of heart muscle due to an obstruction in the blood vessels feeding them. If a person comes in with an arterial blockage but no heart muscle damage this is technically not a "heart attack" but instead a "wake up call". It should be heeded. That said a hospital admission is not the same as a proven heart attack. In the TOWN that was the basis for this ER heart attack cases decreased from an average of seven to four per month. This is a very small sample and it cited "hospital admissions" for heart attacks. In states or even large cities that banned indoor/bar smoking (IE: San Francisco, NYC or New York State the larger sample cases were iconclusive.)
The effectiveness of aspirin in reducing heart attacks came out of the Framingham study. It was good research as is the entire research project. Anyway, if there was a definite second hand smoke link proven "by looking straight in the horses mouth" the Framingham study should have shown it. OK to distribute to all. I'll paste on the blog and eventually post on web site.
No comments:
Post a Comment