Women Top Men on Incidents of Scary Lung Disease

Health Wellness

Image result for 1950s actress smoking

When I was a kid growing up, smoking cigarettes was as common as fast food is today. Many primetime television programs featured actors and actresses puffing on cigarettes. Watch movies made during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s and you’ll see the same thing, actors and actresses puffing away on a cigarette. Some of the most popular television commercials were advertising cigarettes. Even PTA meetings were filled with cigarette smoke from all of the parents. It was difficult to sit through a long airplane flight (and they were longer back then) with all the cigarette smoke.

At the time, cigarette smoking was as popular among women as men. By the late 1960s, marketers began to realize women controlled more of the money and spending than men so they began to push products and advertising to target the female population.

On July 22, 1968, Phillip Morris introduced a new cigarette designed just for women. They were called Virginia Slims and they were very popular. They were heavily advertised on television and quickly became a very popular brand of cigarette for the female clientele.

As a result, more and more women began smoking.

Half a century later, that generation of younger female smokers are now the older generation and a recent report shows that the number of women suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has exceeded the number of men and much of it is being attributed to smoking and breathing in second-hand smoke when they were younger.

Joan Collins was one of those young ladies who thought that smoking was not only acceptable but made her more sophisticated. She said she smoked her first cigarette when she was 16-years-old. Sixty-seven years later, she began coughing and couldn’t stop. She also found that she couldn’t take a deep breath. She drove herself to a local hospital where they diagnosed her as having COPD. She was so frightened by not being able to breathe that she instantly quit smoking, but the damage was already done.

Originally, COPD was considered to be more of a male disease but the latest figures show that females now make up 58% of COPD cases. There are about 14.7 million people in America with COPD and the majority are now women. Women also make up the majority of COPD related deaths at 53%.

If you break it down differently, about 6% of all men in the US have been diagnosed with COPD but about 8% of all women also have been diagnosed with the scary lung disease. Dr. Meilan Han, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan stated:

“It’s a huge public health problem for women that doesn’t really get enough attention. This is one of the top killers of women in the country.”

It’s advised that every person, especially women who smoked a lot when they were younger or lived with someone who did or worked in a smoke-filled environment, see their doctor and be tested for any signs of COPD. The earlier it is detected, the better your doctor can treat you and the better chance of you have of living longer.

COPD Lung Disease

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