Post by: vox nihili on August 27, 2017, 04:07:46 pm
I'm Vox Nihili, one of the NatMods here at AN and a student currently in their fifth (FIFTH!!!!) year of Uni. I've already got a degree under my belt (Biomedicine) and am now studying medicine at UniMelb.
Over my time at Uni, I've been lucky enough to do a lot of great things. Some of that includes:
-editing UniMelb Adventures
-a free trip to Canberra this year
-lecturing at SWOT
-teaching with VCESS
-debating in second year (and then debating coaching)
-writing for Farrago
-mentoring with UMSU
This journal is going to talk about my experiences with some of these things and more :) Really keen to make this a little bit interactive, so if you have any questions or comments fire away!
Post by: Quantum44 on August 27, 2017, 06:33:48 pm
I'm curious as to why you chose the name 'vox nihili'. If I'm not mistaken it is Latin for 'voice of nothing', and as a student of Latin this interests me (not that you have to be familiar with Latin to be aware of the common phrases).
I'm also interested to hear how you are finding medicine at UniMelb as not many AN members are into their post-graduate studies.
Looking forward to hearing more from you!
Post by: vox nihili on August 27, 2017, 07:31:55 pm
Hello there,
I'm curious as to why you chose the name 'vox nihili'. If I'm not mistaken it is Latin for 'voice of nothing', and as a student of Latin this interests me (not that you have to be familiar with Latin to be aware of the common phrases).
I'm also interested to hear how you are finding medicine at UniMelb as not many AN members are into their post-graduate studies.
Looking forward to hearing more from you!
Hey mate!
Will clear up the Latin now. I'll admit that I had a bit of a Google when I wanted to change things up. Vox nihili literally means voice of nothing, but in English we use it to refer to an ambiguous/meaningless phrase, which is basically what a username is
Obviously the title of this blog is play on words, taking from the phrase "vox populi, vox dei" meaning the voice of the people is the voice of god.
I never had the opportunity to study Latin at school or uni unfortunately, although I would have liked to! In the end I managed Ancient Greek instead, which was a full on experience. As I remember, the lecturer was actually a doctor who had worked on understanding ancient texts concerning medicine. The Ancient Greeks were probably the first to practice medicine somewhat similarly to how we practice it today. Certainly, a lot of the ethical basis of medicine derives from Greek philosophy, hence the Hippocratic oath. Galen was another Greek philosopher who had a big impact on medicine. His text of pharmacology was basically the Rang & Dale of the time and for more than 1000 years afterwards.
Post by: Absurdo on August 28, 2017, 07:10:18 pm
How hard was it exactly to get into medicine? Did doing a biomed degree makes it any easier?
Looking forward to hearing more :)
Post by: sweetiepi on August 28, 2017, 07:23:24 pm
Galen was another Greek philosopher who had a big impact on medicine. His text of pharmacology was basically the Rang & Dale of the time and for more than 1000 years afterwards.Gotta love Rang and Dale! :)
What's your main interest in medicine currently?
Post by: vox nihili on August 29, 2017, 09:34:41 am
The clinical years in many respects are a lot more loose, so what we're expected to know and what we aren't expected to know isn't hugely clear. That can be a source of enormous frustration and arguably isn't particularly fair (especially seeing as Victoria is the only state left that actually worries about marks pretty much), but we manage :)
Hi there,
How hard was it exactly to get into medicine? Did doing a biomed degree makes it any easier?
Looking forward to hearing more :)
It's hard. That said, it's probably not quite as hard as some people would have you believe.
Doing biomed doesn't make it easier to get into med per se, though being in a degree full of people who want to do med is definitely motivating.
Gotta love Rang and Dale! :)
What's your main interest in medicine currently?
Hahah I'm so glad there was someone who enjoyed the Rang and Dale reference :p
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. If I had to pick a speciality tomorrow I'd pick neuro, but with that said that's barely a strong preference. All I know is that in my future I want to teach and I also want to work on the "bigger picture" things. Whether that's policy or whatnot, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think I'll be content without getting out there and working on something.
At the moment that something that I'm really interested in is how we gather and apply evidence in medicine, but whether that changes I don't know :)
Post by: vox nihili on September 19, 2017, 02:43:36 pm
Surgery Rotation
So that started. Haven't had the chance to go to theatre yet. Only went on my first wardround today (had to wake up before 5am lel). I'm starting to really enjoy the way surgery is approached, particularly the way it's taught. It seems to be a lot more practical than some of the other specialities. Unfortunately, I don't really have the patience, dexterity or love of mornings to be a surgeon.
UTAs
For the most part, we kind of have to learn clinical examination (i.e. stethoscopes and shit) by ourselves. This is sometimes a little challenging, but typically works pretty well.
Some examinations, however, are deliberately taught. These tend to be the sensitive examinations: think breasts and genitals. Though we do have the opportunity to hone our skills with patients, before we do that, some people come to visit us at the hospital and go through how to do the exam. We then get to have a go at the exam ourselves.
These sessions are pretty confronting, but they're also really useful. The people who come in are absolute guns. Firstly, for allowing us to practise on them, but also because they're just so lovely about teaching us too—no judgment at all.
Practice Exam
As mentioned in the last post, we had a practice exam the other week. We only really got the results of the MCQ section. The average was really low, which was mildly concerning; however, I was above this so I think I have a little less to worry about.
I don't feel like I've worked nearly as hard this year as I did last and could certainly have approached the clinical environment better. At this point, I think I'm just ready for holidays and to give things a better crack next year.
Post by: vox nihili on September 26, 2017, 09:14:17 pm
Things I learned:
-scrubs are comfy
-surgery involves a lot of standing around doing not much
-anaethetists really are good at Sudoku
Post by: K888 on September 26, 2017, 09:20:06 pm
-anaethetists really are good at SudokuWhat about crosswords? ;)
Exciting about the surgery! Is this a field you're finding interesting? Like, something you'd think "yeah, this would be cool to do", or more a "interesting, but doesn't quite tickle my fancy"?
Are you just on a general surgery rotation, or also seeing orthopaedics, etc.?
Post by: vox nihili on October 15, 2017, 05:45:38 pm
The following Monday I had to have a fill-in session that I had missed on anaesthetics, which ended up great too. I finished my cannula assessment and ended up placed with a consultant who was a Richmond supporter, too. It was only two days after our grand final win, so we spent most of the happy as Larry chatting about the footy!
What about crosswords? ;)
Exciting about the surgery! Is this a field you're finding interesting? Like, something you'd think "yeah, this would be cool to do", or more a "interesting, but doesn't quite tickle my fancy"?
Are you just on a general surgery rotation, or also seeing orthopaedics, etc.?
Sorry I missed this!
No crosswords...there was definitely time to do them though, so that stereotype is one that I still reckon might be plausible :p
Wouldn't do surgery, simply because it's a really gruelling process going through the training and I'm not sure that I'm not really sure that my skills are up to it.
Seeing everything. We spend some weeks on different units, but to be honest attendance has been pretty poor. Exams are coming up and whilst it would be great to get to theatre the cost-benefit just doesn't add up unfortunately.
Post by: vox nihili on November 17, 2017, 12:26:50 am
Exams wen't ok—not as well as they did last year, but I've managed to enjoy a better balance between studying and social life and have probably had a happier year than first year, so that's good in the end. To add to that, I've also pursued more opportunities outside of med, which have been fantastic.
A huge highlight this year was getting to go on a sponsored trip to Canberra (if you're a med student, feel free to send me a message about it—it's great) for AMSA National Leadership Development Seminar. There we did the typical kind of conferency stuff, with speakers from a broad range of areas. They were pretty fantastic, but the best part of it by far was getting to meet medical students from all around the country and hang out in Canberra. I made some really wonderful friends there, some of whom I'm seeing next week actually, and even got a chance to sneak into parliament for Question Time.
Next year I have decided to continue to try to pursue things outside of med, even if it means that my marks will suffer for it slightly. To that end, I will be getting more involved in Global Health, as our MedSoc's co-chair of Global Health. I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.
Med wise, third year sees us all over the shop. Personally, I start off doing GP, then onto psych and after that aged care. The last two rotations of the year, which take place in the year's second half, are paediatrics (at the Children's!) and women's. Looking forward to GP and paeds in particular, the rest is a bit eh but you never know what that might be like at the end of the day!
This will likely be my last entry for the year; potentially something around results time, but I will be in Europe at that point...so probs not.
Post by: Calebark on November 17, 2017, 12:46:40 am
I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.I also hope you're comfortable with being called a fucking baller because you're a fucking baller.
Post by: vox nihili on December 17, 2017, 11:57:43 pm
Earlier in this journal I briefly discussed having to rejig my expectations around results time. I didn't really give it a full discussion, which is a pity because it's something that played on my mind a lot. When you start med school, you're told 1000x over that you can't expect to do as well as you did in your undergrad. Effectively, everyone who goes into med came into it via an HD average, so given our results are comparative, the majority of the cohort will go from an HD average to something lower.
For the first semester or so, this was difficult to deal with. I'd prided myself on doing really well and suddenly feeling like the dumbest person in the room was challenging. It wasn't until half way through the year, when I did surprisingly well on our midyears (I actually fluked my way into the top 15 or so in the cohort) that I realised that I probably could do really well out of that year. As it turned out, come results time I did: I just scraped through with an 81.
Come second year, I knew the challenge would be bigger. First year is all the pre-clinical stuff, basically the fourth year of biomedicine; whereas, second year is all about clinical knowledge, something which I struggle to study for. As second year progressed, I constantly found myself without any real idea about what I should be doing. I felt very much like I was treading water, as opposed to first year when I worked my arse off and constantly pushed towards my goal of doing well.
Second year eventually got to a point where it became pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to repeat my success. So begun the long process of trying to accept that, particularly as the chances of saving my year at the last minute became more and more distant. There were lots of conversations with loved ones about it, and then conversations with friends, too. At one point, I even discussed it with one of my MD1 tute groups, to try to let them know that I knew what some of them were going through.
Come exam time I didn't prepare nearly as hard as the previous year. I just wanted to pass through respectably and I started to feel reasonably confident that I could do that. When exams came around, I knew I'd put in a solid effort and was certain I would pass competently. It didn't feel like it had the previous year though, when I felt confident that I knew things.
I had VCESS work to do after exams and then headed overseas, so I really didn't think about results much until it was about time for them to come out. When they eventually did come out, it was a WAM change, so I had to calculate it. The WAM change shocked me: it had gone up. I crunched the numbers in my head and worked out that I'd managed an 82.
What hit me was a mixture of joy, crushing guilt and an emotion that can only be termed "what the fuck". My humour is often self-deprecating, but I've never been a person to talk myself down academically. Indeed, I've usually had a fairly good idea of how I'd go. If I'd do well, I knew I'd do well. Likewise, if I'd cooked something, I knew it was cooked.
At the end of it all, I'd spoken to a lot of people about results, including everyone here, and now feel like a total fraud. In high school, I used to be able to wing things pretty well, but at uni I've always prided myself on "earning" my results, so that I ended up with that is something I feel extremely grateful for, but also something that made me feel like a bit of a fraud in the end.
Post by: Shenz0r on January 02, 2018, 11:55:39 pm
I was the reverse to vox - same grade in MD1 but I took a slight hit in MD2, dropping down to a H2A.
To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.
Post by: vox nihili on January 03, 2018, 11:50:42 am
To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.
This sums it up so well in a way that I couldn't really capture here, thanks so much for this.
Marks matter insofar as they help determine where your internship will be, but I'm not really convinced that they give any insight into the kind of doctor someone will be. "Experiences and opportunities", where I felt I let myself down a lot last year, really do matter a lot more in the long run. Nobody asks their doctor "what mark did you get in medical school", but they do always ask "have you done/seen this before?".
Post by: Russ on January 03, 2018, 02:20:30 pm
I would love for internships to not be merit based but as long as there's an academic component downstream of that, it doesn't really make much difference
Post by: vox nihili on February 26, 2018, 10:14:27 pm
My first term this year is GP and I have been placed in a lovely clinic near my home. There are only three doctors at the clinic and, for the first time, I have been placed in a predominately private-billing clinic. The differences between the way medicine is practiced in bulk-billing clinics (where I have been before) and private-billing clinics is quite stark. This would appear not to be due only to the differences in billing, but also the differences in the demographics of the patients we see. At this clinic, they are far more affluent than my previous practices. Though "health inequalities" are a topic that we're confronted with quite early on, I didn't expect the difference to be this stark. Simply put, patients at this practice come in a hell of a lot healthier. Even those with serious medical conditions appear to be less serious. For instance, in five weeks I've only seen one patient with poorly controlled diabetes and only one overall with COPD. I'd reach these numbers in one session at the other clinics!
Some might feel a little resentful about this; that people's health is so strongly connected to their level of wealth. I think this is fair enough and is symptomatic of a system that doesn't work for those of a low SES background. Personally, though, I'm choosing to be optimistic, as well. That the patients we're seeing are so much healthier is a ringing endorsement of the capacity of health care and, more importantly, preventative medicine to deliver. The big challenge then is to find a way to achieve the same level of good health in people from low SES backgrounds.
Policy discussion aside, the clinic itself is wonderful. There are three doctors there, all of whom are lovely to me. The practice staff are also great and have been very warm and welcoming. I even managed to score myself a spot on their website, which was a bit of a laugh! I think the patients who attend the clinic are particularly fortunate. All of the doctors appear to practice good medicine and are extremely thorough. Perhaps as importantly, if not more so, the clinic has in place a lot of really sensible procedures to ensure that patients are followed up appropriately and to ensure that the doctors are performing lots of preventative medicine, not just dealing with people's presenting complaints. As a model for good practice, I think this practice really works. Their recall system is excellent, and you tend to find that issues are followed up really well and rarely fall through the cracks. It's one thing to be a good doctor, but without systems like these in place patients far too often fall through the cracks.
Aside from placement, I've been really busy! I'm working for SWOT again, this year as their Human Resources officer. We've managed this year to overhaul the human resources policy, such that it is fairer. Without going into the details, we've put in place a strategy to blind all of our applications, so that all of our applicants are assessed on merit and not their personal relationship with the people selecting them. This has been a huge task and the technical challenge of distributing blinded applications has been fairly taxing, but with one minor fix to come I think it should hopefully pay dividends.
Beyond SWOT, I've also assumed the role of Global Health co-chair for my med soc. This role involves a lot of different things, but is basically split into events and advocacy. We run various events to get a good vibe happening around global health and to get people engaged in global health issues. On the advocacy side of things, we're peripherally involved in curriculum development and, in particular, feedback to the school re global health teaching. More critically, my co-chair and I are joint AMSA global health reps for the University, meaning that we represent our student body at national meetings of the Australian Medical Student Association's Global Health Council. I haven't been to one of these yet, but the meeting effectively exists to determine AMSA's policies around Global Health, which inform its activities (mainly advocacy and education) in this space. AMSA global health is surprisingly big, forming the most sizeable sub-committee of AMSA itself, so the fact that we're in this position is fairly exciting!
Post by: vox nihili on February 20, 2019, 07:15:42 pm
As many of you will have heard on here, I've taken the year off to take a degree in Public Health. This is an opportunity offered to ten of us each year, who take the year off to do an intercalated MPH. This works because we get credit for our research in fourth year to our MPH, we get an exemption for the foundations subject and we also just get some random credit because med student.
The MPH starts in a couple of weeks. In the first sem I'll be taking: Biostats, epidemiology, public health leadership and management, health economics and an IT subject about eHealth.
Altogether I'm looking forward to it, but am a little bit apprehensive to go back after such a long break. It'll be a bit of a change from med, too, as the subjects are largely assignment based and there are heaps of readings, something that I've never really had to contend with at University. On the flipside, I only have ten contact hours a week, which is a long way from my high water mark last year of 80.
Having a bit more time has allowed me to get involved in some extra-curricular stuff too, which is nice. I'm writing policy at the Australian Medical Student Association and working on their global health advocacy team. I'm also going to make some public health videos for the MD1s at UniMelb and will work with some of my mates at SWOT to help them out this year. Finally, I also managed to get a job in health consulting with UniMelb, which will be super cool!
Post by: smamsmo22 on February 20, 2019, 09:37:48 pm
Has been a very long time between drinks, but I thought it was high time to provide an update!
As many of you will have heard on here, I've taken the year off to take a degree in Public Health. This is an opportunity offered to ten of us each year, who take the year off to do an intercalated MPH. This works because we get credit for our research in fourth year to our MPH, we get an exemption for the foundations subject and we also just get some random credit because med student.
The MPH starts in a couple of weeks. In the first sem I'll be taking: Biostats, epidemiology, public health leadership and management, health economics and an IT subject about eHealth.
Altogether I'm looking forward to it, but am a little bit apprehensive to go back after such a long break. It'll be a bit of a change from med, too, as the subjects are largely assignment based and there are heaps of readings, something that I've never really had to contend with at University. On the flipside, I only have ten contact hours a week, which is a long way from my high water mark last year of 80.
Having a bit more time has allowed me to get involved in some extra-curricular stuff too, which is nice. I'm writing policy at the Australian Medical Student Association and working on their global health advocacy team. I'm also going to make some public health videos for the MD1s at UniMelb and will work with some of my mates at SWOT to help them out this year. Finally, I also managed to get a job in health consulting with UniMelb, which will be super cool!
I had no idea opportunities like this were offered at UoM, let alone that you had were selected for it- it sounds really interesting :) What made you decide to do it, and are you graduating med a year later now? (sorry if you explained this in the post I missed it). It's cool that you're getting involved with so many projects and programs at uni; are these things you sign up for/ express interest etc or do they approach you?
Good luck nonetheless!!
Post by: vox nihili on February 20, 2019, 11:29:05 pm
I had no idea opportunities like this were offered at UoM, let alone that you had were selected for it- it sounds really interesting :) What made you decide to do it, and are you graduating med a year later now? (sorry if you explained this in the post I missed it). It's cool that you're getting involved with so many projects and programs at uni; are these things you sign up for/ express interest etc or do they approach you?
Good luck nonetheless!!
I've always been really interested in public health. I guess I'm one of those people who sometimes finds minutiae a little bored but enjoys the bigger picture. So when I cruise around the wards, I'm not usually thinking about the problems the individual patients have, but rather the ways that we deal with the patients more broadly: how do we allocate beds, is the ward round a good use of resources, do these people actually need to be in hospital etc etc. Unfortunately, a lot of these things are done really badly in medicine, which really frustrates me. So going off and doing public health is a good way to develop the skills to deal with that.
Yes I will graduate a year later, which is pretty sad to be honest. I'll do my best to make it to the med graduation this year, which I suspect will be both really lovely but also quite sad.
In terms of the opportunities I chatted about, all of those things are things I actively applied for, but to be in the position to apply for them comes from having done other things in the past. Getting to know people, getting involved in other things outside of med school.
Post by: vox nihili on March 12, 2019, 10:01:32 pm
Epidemiology 1
This is a core we have to do. I'm looking forward to this subject because I've always really enjoyed epidemiology. Having a look at the schedule for the semester makes it look as though it's going to be a pretty slow semester, but I'm ok with that. The frenetic pace of med is a bit much so it'll be good to wide back a bit.
Biostatistics
Another core but one that I was a lot more concerned about, as I've taken a stats subject before and really struggled. This particular subject, from first impressions, appears to be really well taught and move a lot slower than the stats subject in biomed. I think i'll have a new appreciation for statistics, as it's a skill that I really wish I had developed more, as I'm really interested in evidence-based medicine. The first few weeks will move very slowly. We started off with types of data, which was year 7 maths.
Health Economics
This is my only elective subject this semester and the one that I am most looking forward to. The lecturer we have struggles to convey things a bit, so that's going to make the semester tricky, but otherwise the subject is really well organised and the teaching staff appear to really put a lot of care into the subject, which is really nice to see. Definitely going to be a steep learning curve but I'm excited.
Public Health Leadership and Management
Another core and an intensive. Have had 2/5 days of teaching already and it's been a slog. Really not enjoying the teaching sessions at the moment, which is a bit disappointing as I really hoped to gain a lot from this subject, in particular, I hoped to learn how to manage a project better. Unfortunately most of us have sort of been left scrambling to understand wtf is going on but ah well.
I initially enrolled in a health informatics subject but when the subject material came up on the LMS it didn't really seem right for me, so I've dropped out and will overload in second semester instead.
Post by: vox nihili on March 15, 2019, 01:03:26 pm
This week has kicked up a little bit compared to last week, but things are still moving slowly.
Biostatistics
We had our second lecture this week and our first tute. Both were pretty (read: extremely) straightforward. The tute dealt with data types, familiar to anyone who's studied year eight maths. The lecture introduced various types of graphs and the concept of median. For someone with a med/biomed background, this has been frustrating, but the slow pace reflects the fact that we have a very varied cohort and is providing me at least a soft-landing back into uni, for which I'm grateful.
Epidemiology
Similarly, we had another lecture and our first tute this week. The tute was very straightforward and examined the concepts of risk and rate, giving us opportunities to work with real data to calculate them. The lecture introduced comparative measures used in epidemiology, namely concepts such as risk ratio and population attributable risk. We've covered this before in MD1, but these concepts are very interesting.
One particularly interesting point (and the example usually given in these lectures) regards smoking. When we think about the risks associated with smoking, we often think about lung cancer. This is very sensible; smoking increases your risk of lung cancer by about 1400%. Does this mean that most smokers die of lung cancer? No, not at all. Indeed, more smokers die of heart disease CAUSED by their smoking. Even though your risk of heart disease only increases by 60% if you're a smoker, heart disease is simply so much more common that this small increase in risk adds more deaths than the MASSIVE increase in lung cancer risk (lung cancer being super rare in the first place). So when you see a smoker, they're more likely to have heart disease than lung cancer and, indeed, more likely to die of the former.
The concept of attributable fractions is also quite cool. Basically this is a way of calculating how much disease a risk factor contributes. For instance, we can use this to calculate how much of the heart disease in smokers is actually caused by smoking. Likewise, we can broaden this out to consider how much of the heart disease in a population (smokers and non-smokers alike) is caused by smoking.
Health Economics
This subject is still a bit of a struggle, but I'm doing a lot of work outside of class to keep up. This is paying off and I'm learning lots, although a lot of it is probably not super relevant to what I'm meant to be learning.
This week in class we learned about the concept of utility (which is an abstract way of describing the amount of "goodness" someone gets from things). We looked at the way that various combinations of goods can achieve the same level of goodness. For instance, 5 $1 coins and 2 50cent coins is equally "good" as 4 $1 and 4 50cent. We then looked at the best combination of goods someone can achieve given a particular budget constraint, which is a fancy way of working out how to get the most bang for your buck.
In my own study, I learned more about supply and demand. This eventually led to having a look at how taxes and subsidies impact on supply and demand. Interestingly, we also looked at policies such as the first home owners' grant; the benefits of which mainly flow to the suppliers (i.e. people who own the house) rather than the purchasers (the people who receive the grant). It turns out there's good reason to suspect it's quite a silly policy, but it's popular amongst the hoi polloi and therefore it continues to exist.
Leadership and Project Management
Also still a bit of a struggle. The teaching sessions haven't really contributed a lot in my view, although others differ in this, which is making the subject itself a bit of a drag. Slowly but surely things are getting better in our practical tutorials. We've been tasked with designing a programme to combat indigenous eye disease. In my group's case, we've been asked to focus on the coordination between ophthalmology and optometry services in the Alice Springs region.
I won't share what our team has planned, but suffice to say we're reasonably happy with it. We also consulted the literature to look at what others had done in this space, and their ideas were remarkably similar, which is encouraging.
Post by: K888 on March 15, 2019, 03:18:45 pm
Quote
One particularly interesting point (and the example usually given in these lectures) regards smoking. When we think about the risks associated with smoking, we often think about lung cancer. This is very sensible; smoking increases your risk of lung cancer by about 1400%. Does this mean that most smokers die of lung cancer? No, not at all. Indeed, more smokers die of heart disease CAUSED by their smoking. Even though your risk of heart disease only increases by 60% if you're a smoker, heart disease is simply so much more common that this small increase in risk adds more deaths than the MASSIVE increase in lung cancer risk (lung cancer being super rare in the first place). So when you see a smoker, they're more likely to have heart disease than lung cancer and, indeed, more likely to die of the former.This is really interesting! I'm unsure of the exact numbers/percentages but I know smoking is also a big risk factor for strokes - being a massive risk factor for heart disease must surely be a big contributor to this
Post by: vox nihili on March 16, 2019, 10:24:38 am
This is really interesting! I'm unsure of the exact numbers/percentages but I know smoking is also a big risk factor for strokes - being a massive risk factor for heart disease must surely be a big contributor to this
Yeah the underlying mechanism is basically the same. The chemicals in smoking damage the walls of vessels and make the blood a bit more clotty.
Moral of the story: don’t smoke!