5 Things That Are As Deadly Or Deadlier Than Smoking

Cigarette smoking is considered a major health hazard with several warnings about smokers being liable to die young.

However, while smoking is not a healthy habit, there are several other risks behaviours and factors that scientists have identified as being more dangerous than smoking. From people’s growing preference for sedentary, isolated lifestyles to beauty habits, here are the risk factors science says to keep an eye on.

Loneliness

Although social media was created with the aim of helping people to socialise, its growing force has encouraged waning in-person contact and this has led Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to label loneliness a worldwide epidemic. Research by a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, has also found in the research that loneliness reduces people’s life spans by the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Sitting

A 2014 study found THAT Sitting all day increases risk for a raft of different cancers, Researchers included in their meta-analyses the data from four million people involving how often they sat to watch TV, do work, and commute. Each two-hour increase in sitting time upped people’s risks for colon, endometrial, and lung cancers, regardless of whether they still exercised during the day.

Sleep loss

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called sleep deprivation a public health problem, as some 50 to 70 million people in the US have sleep or wakefulness disorder.

Professor Valery Gafarov, of the World Health Organisation, noted in 2015 that insufficient sleep raises the risk of stroke and heart attack to similar degrees as regular cigarette use.

Tanning

In 2014, researchers published a study in JAMA that found indoor tanning alone led to more cases of skin cancer than smoking did with lung cancer. It is believed that indoor tanning is potentially more dangerous than smoking.

Poor diet

In 2016, researchers studying the mortality risks from poor diet concluded the death rates exceeded those of alcohol, drugs, unprotected sex, and tobacco combined. Also, it has been discovered that sugary, processed foods high in saturated fats can expose people to potentially fatal diseases at similar, if not greater, rates than smoking. The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition published a 2016 study that concluded: Deaths due to poor diet exceeded deaths of alcohol, drugs, unprotected sex and tobacco combined.

The medical information provided in this article is provided as an information resource only. This information does not create any patient-physician relationship and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment.