I’ve noticed this for a long time. People who smoke get sicker, and stay sick longer, than people who don’t:
A new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine could explain why the cold and flu virus symptoms that are often mild and transient in non-smokers can seriously sicken smokers. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the study also identified the mechanism by which viruses and cigarette smoke interact to increase lung inflammation and damage.
Until recently, scientists haven’t been able to explain why smokers have more exaggerated responses to viral infections. Smokers have been more likely than non-smokers to die during previous influenza epidemics and are more prone to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Furthermore, children who are exposed to second-hand smoke have more severe responses when infected with respiratory synctial virus.
Don’t even get me started on the subject of cigarette smoking.
Both my parents smoked like chimneys. Two or three packs a day. The emphysema would have eventually killed my dad had he not killed himself with an alcohol overdose. I loathed smoking and went to great lengths to NEVER develop the habit. But I still grew up to develop severe allergies, and later, chronic asthma.
Stormcrow? Did we grow up in the same house?
Though it was the congestive heart failure, not the booze, that finally did in my father. This was after a series of aneurisms.