Do cigars really help with asthma?

In social networks, you can often find a statement that smoking cigars helps from asthma. Most often, this is accompanied by links to famous smokers - Che Guevara or US President Theodore Roosevelt. We decided to check if this is so.

The main source of stories about the benefits of cigars for asthmatics are numerous biographies of the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara. He suffered from asthma since childhood, and, according to his stories, in severe form - strong attacks almost They destroyed Che Guevaru when landing in Cuba in 1956. Often to him attributed The statement that the cigars helped him cope with the attacks. And it is logical that such stories can be found everywhere on sitesdedicated to cigars.

First of all, it is worth paying attention to the fact that Che Guevara himself, obviously, did not consider cigars to be the only cure for asthma. In autobiographical notes on partisan actions in Cuba "Episodes of the Revolutionary War", Che Guevar is a lot He wrote My asthma made itself felt about the absence of medicines that tormented him and complained about the lack of medicines. Due to the lack of drugs, she again chained me to bed. I facilitated my painful suffering because I smoked self -circle from dry leaves of fragrant peas. ” Also he ExplainedWhy began to smoke the cigars: "Together with everyone, I enjoyed the first time in my life by cigars, which I learned to smoke in order to drive out annoying mosquitoes."

There are a lot of research on the dangers of cigars as a special case of consumption of nicotine. For example, in 1998, this issue was devoted to conference American Society for the fight against cancer. Other scientists Compared content carboxyhemoglobin (compounds of hemoglobin with carbon monoxide) among consumers of ordinary cigarettes and from smokers of cigars and tubes and established that this indicator is on average five times more than in non -smokers. A lot of work has been published as a whole about the dangers of various types of smoking: smoking ordinary cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, combinations Cigars and tubes. But there was no separate study on the effect of cigars on the body of a person suffering from asthma until recently. So far, there is only one such work, but its general provisions coincide with earlier studies about the dangers of cigars for the body.

In 2016, a group of experts from Greece published study About the effect of cigars on asthma. 47 young (18–31 years) smoking men participated in the experiment. 22 participants were sick with asthma, the rest did not experience health problems. Scientists measured several parameters, including exhausted carbon monoxide and the resistance of the respiratory system. The authors of the experiment pay attention to the fact that smoke from cigarettes and cigars inhales in different ways: in the first case-deep, in the second-no. Cigaretes and the harm that they carry for asthmatics were dedicated to another studypublished in 2010. Its authors found out that deep inhalation of cigarette smoke is more destructive for the suffering from asthma than for the rest.

As a result of the study of smoking cigars, Greek specialists came to several conclusions. Firstly, both groups (asthmatics and healthy smokers) after half-hour smoking of a cigar showed an equally high level of toxic carboxyhemoglobin. That is, in this case, scientists began with an obvious conclusion: smoking cigars equally harms both asthmatics and smokers without asthma. Secondly, when comparing the response indicators, it turned out that there is still the difference: smoking cigars affects the astipatric respiratory tract in asthmatics, and in healthy participants in the experiment, dysfunction is localized mainly in the central respiratory tracts.

According to scientists, smoking cigars is more dangerous for asthmatics than for the rest: due to the heterogeneity of ventilation of lungs, pathological changes are more difficult to identify. But in all cases, without exception, the respiratory system acutely reacted to smoking cigars, albeit in various ways. Thus, Greek scientists came to two key conclusions. Firstly, smoking cigars is no more useful than smoking cigarettes; Secondly, no separate benefits from this were revealed for asthmatics.

Image on the cover: Frame from the film "Topaz", 1969

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