More than 60% of Chinese men smoke
This is an interesting statistic published by The Lancelet, almost a third of all the smokers in the world are Chinese, as reported by the New York Times. Even more disturbing, more than a 2/3 of all Chinese males are smokers compared to only around less than 10% of the women in China.One of the reasons why so many people smoke in China is that the cigrettes are very cheap in China, you can buy a packet of cigarettes there for roughly $2-3AUD per packet compared to $8+ AUD per pack in Australia.As a dentist, if you are smoking at the moment, we highly recommend you to cut down and quit smoking in the long run, as it can cause a wide array of health problems such as:
- Oral cancers
- Periodontal disease (gum disease)
- Higher chance of losing your teeth due to smoking, with most situations requiring taking your tooth out.
- Increase in the staining of your tooth
- Delays wound healing and can lead to failure of implant integration to the bone.
The good news is that if you reduce and eventually quit smoking, not only your general health will improve, your oral health will also relatively improve and may gradually return back to pre-smoking levels. So go on, give your general medical practitioner a call and get back healthy (and sexy!)