Wood-burning stoves may raise risk of arthritis

[Bookworm55]

Article in the Times

thetimes.co.uk/article/7cfc...

[helixhelix]

A touch disingenuous? These days aren’t wood fires a middle class thing , so smoking and pollution from living in poor areas by major roads remain a major factor.

I wish someone had told me about RA and risks of smoking - as cancer seems such a multifactorial thing it was easy to ignore that risk. But maybe I would have listened more if it was explained that I would be extremely likely to trigger RA.

[AgedCrone in reply to helixhelix]

You are probably too young to remember…..but the fact that smoking caused lung & other cancers cancers & possibly contributed to RA was known back in the 1940’s.I lived in a house with wood burning stoves untilI I was 18. One of the first questions my rheumatologist asked when I was diagnosed 20+ years ago was did I smoke.?

My grandmother had breast cancer back in the 1940’s, & I remember - even though she was warned of the dangers - she & most people around me growing up continued to smoke. Even GPs back then didn’t regularly emphasise the dangers of smoking causing other diseases as well as cancer.

Thankfully Granny recovered & lived a good life without RA until she was 97! But most people didn’t listen ….they ignored the advice to stop smoking.

As an adult I didn’t smoke…but I worked in enclosed spaces where the air was thick with cigarette smoke…..I too had breast cancer…. not the inherited type….l am now 20 years cancer free, & I developed RA in my 50’s.

So did my exposure to second hand cigarette smoke /wood burning stoves contribute to my cancer/RA? Nobody else in my family has either ….but they do have autoimmune diseases like asthma….I guess I will never know….but if continuing to say “stop smoking”.. ..does save just one person having RA..it’s surely worth saying?

[Lolabridge]

I saw that article too. I had wood open fires and wood burning stoves in previous homes but did live in the countryside where that was commonplace. But like helixhelix I had no idea about RA risk from smoking.

[Neonkittie17 in reply to Lolabridge]

My first rheumy specialist nurse spoke about smoking and it’s association with more severe cases of RA back in 1995 when I was diagnosed with RA and she asked me if I smoked and I said I didn’t/hadn’t. She said many people had a much higher RF and more severe RA if they had been smokers, were still smokers, and even had been exposed as children to passive smoking. Also how Mtx didn’t tend to work as effectively for smokers.

I’ve also read more recent debate as to whether smoking reduces the efficacy of some antiTNFs, but I’m not sure this is proved to be correct. What I do know is that reading up on T cells over the last year or so when changing my RA biologic med, that CD4 T cells (helper T cells) are reduced in smokers. CD4 cells lead the way to fight infections.

[Sheila_G]

Interesting article. I don't like wood burning stoves anyway. They are very bad for the environment.

[Bookworm55 in reply to Sheila_G]

Yes - not at all environmentally friendly as my partner keeps telling me. I have never smoked but have blamed my seropositive RD on everything from being overweight, having glandular fever as teenager to triggering it with my first ever flu jab. Of course I can’t know and I guess this could become a thread on its own - off topic as most of us will never find out.

[Neonkittie17 in reply to Sheila_G]

That’s what my OH has always said to his sister and keeps telling her but she won’t even recycle a piece of paper or cardboard so he’s wasting his time!!

[Angjoplin]

I've had RA for over 20 years and a wood burning stove for the last 5. The stove has immensely helped my RA in the last couple of years as otherwise we wouldn't have been able to afford to heat the house! I find it suspicious that all these articles are coming out at a time when people are trying to find alternatives to crippling gas bills....

[Neonkittie17 in reply to Angjoplin]

🤷‍♀️ You try and leep warm and look after your joints and although I don’t have one I didn’t associate a wood burning stove with RA. I hadn’t heard that wood burning stoves were associated with RA before this thread, but had very much so re smoking and RA.

[Gigi71]

Iv never smoked, but was certainly exposed to it as a child, both parents smoked indoors, as did my ex husband, married 20 plus years. We had a fire when I was at home, my job to light it from the age of 11, we burnt coke, a more refined coal. So who knows, I got RD at age 40, 5 weeks after an hysterectomy. X

[medway-lady]

I think the biggest risk is being alive and breathing. It’s always something, bbq food, diary food, refined food, I’d image anyone with a wood burner, car, that eats normally is just waiting for god. Xx

[Mmrr in reply to medway-lady]

Yes, apart from the biggest risk factors for ill health, such as being obese and smoking for example we do have to live.What would we eat or heat our homes with if we followed every piece of published advice ?

[Neonkittie17 in reply to Mmrr]

Yes always something. I read air fryers are bad for you .. the coatings inside them, so they are using much, much less oil to cook but giving off chemicals. 🤷‍♀️

[AgedCrone in reply to medway-lady]

Absolutely agree…I think It might be all the extra effort deciding what we ought to eat, how to heat our homes without going bankrupt or just planning how many bloomin’ Covid vaccinations to have that is causing all the stress some people suffer!

[cyberbarn]

So, reading this critically as a researcher, my first point is that they don't link to the original research so we have no way of verifying what the research actually said.

I used Google Scholar and couldn't find anything from that University or even 'rheumatoid arthritis' and 'smoking' for 2023. I also searched the University's website and press releases and couldn't find anything.

If anyone does find the paper that this article is based on, please post it here so we can all critique it more accurately. In the mean time, remember, journalists often misrepresent the contents of university press releases. And the Time ain't what it used to be as a newspaper!

[Gottarelax in reply to cyberbarn]

I just took a look on Pubmed and also found nothing regarding wood burners. I found an old review of smoking and RA (2014) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl... should anyone be interested.

[Gottarelax in reply to Gottarelax]

Having done a little more digging. It seems that it is related to this publication... bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmj... which centers on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

[KittyJ]

Interesting, I grew up in a house without a wood burning fire, just central heating and was not around people who smoked either. There will always be some new theory about why we get these things but I doubt I’ll ever find out the reason for me, if any🤷🏻‍♀️

[Neonkittie17]

l haven’t seen anything re RA and smoking from 2023 but recall reading many articles from around 2019 and earlier from the BMJ, Oxford Academic, British Society of Rheumatogy, Harvard Gazette/University to name a few very credible sources (as I’m picky where I research!) NRAS has a page on smoking and RA. Just not seen anything new this year. I’m not a smoker and never have been but my late father was.