Tobacco Turns Your Bones to Dust—New Shocking Study Reveals Smoking Destroys Your Skeleton

New research was made about tobacco's effect on human skeletons, indicating that it leaves permanent marks on bones, even centuries after death.

Scientists at Leicester University explored the skeletons of the 12th-19th centuries to see how smoking changes bone structure and reveals the long-term effects of tobacco on the human body.

Detectable Impact Even After Death

Tobacco Turns Your Bones to Dust—New Shocking Study Reveals Smoking

Tobacco was first introduced in Europe during the late 16th century. Researchers were interested in exploring whether that introduction produced observable changes in the human body, particularly their skeleton structure. According to Interesting Engineering, the results of their study are quite clear: tobacco smoking has deep, lasting effects on bones that remain detectable long after death.

While this discovery leaves the knowledge of how it happened, scientists now trace changes and connect tobacco consumption with the dysfunction of bones and diseases. This data is relevant because it provides a better view of how tobacco, something currently consumed by 1.3 billion people globally, has affected human health for years.

From Teeth to Bones

Contrary to the earlier work, osteoarchaeologists focused more on the identification of tobacco use based solely on teeth examination. Even though the method was helpful, it was not fully utilized due to the bad preservation of dental samples in many cases. Other forms of tobacco smoking or taking, like snuffing, may not always indicate any signs on the teeth and thus are not visible.

Considering this, researchers at the University of Leicester concentrated on bones. The spongy tissue that surrounds the marrow and forms most parts of the skeleton was the most apparent point of concentration.

Analysis of this body part was hoped to yield a clue towards a more accurate method of detecting tobacco use during times and also its health implications.

Analyzing Skeletons For Signs of Tobacco Use

Published in Science Advances, the study involved 177 skeletons of adults in the urban cemetery and 146 in the rural location. They divided the skeletons into two groups: pre-tobacco introduction, those who died before tobacco was introduced to Europe, and post-tobacco introduction: those who died after tobacco introduction.

Using methods such as mass spectroscopy, they isolated 45 distinct molecular signatures from the bones of the smokers that they did not find in non-smokers.

The study, for the first time, focused on examining the bone metabolome, which is the system in charge of carrying out the metabolic functions of the bones. Their findings would prove that tobacco use leaves a unique metabolic record in the bones that hold for long after death.

Long-Lasting Tobacco Impact On Human Bones

The study's results support the evidence that tobacco consumption causes a profound and permanent effect on skeletal structure. Currently, researchers possess a better method of gathering health data from historical populations to examine how diseases caused by tobacco use have changed over time.

This new approach opens up the scope of research of other phenotypes affected by smoking, and later scientists can trace back to molecular level changes from the time tobacco was first introduced into Europe up until the present time.

Revealing Health Risks of Tobacco Over Time

This most pioneering research is one giant leap forward in the analysis of tobacco's full health impact on humans.

Research skeletons and other artifacts from various time periods can now give researchers a better understanding of how this substance has impacted past generations and how it continues to affect the same health status today. This new research avenue will surely provide a clearer picture of how mass use has shaped human health.