Smoking to Reduce Weight: No Kidding?

I don't want to promote smoking. I had heard that rumours that smoking can reduce weight. I started smoking 10 years ago, but it never give me ideal weight. Once I was very satisfied to my shape, it is due to diet and very much exercise. But at least, finally I know that the rumours have background.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Offering clues to why smokers often gain weight after quitting, a new study suggests that smoking enhances the activity of a gene that helps break down body fat.
Researchers found that compared with non-smokers, a group of healthy smokers showed greater activity in a gene called AZGP1 in cell samples taken from their airways.
Because the gene is thought to be important in breaking down fat and controlling weight, the findings point to one possible reason that smokers tend to weigh less than non-smokers -- and why people often put on pounds after quitting.

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Genes determine cancer risk of smokers?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Certain changes in a gene called ADAM33 can determine whether a smoker is likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or not, new research indicates.
Only about a quarter of long-term smokers develop COPD, the authors note. ADAM33 has been shown in previous studies to be associated with asthma and overreactive airways. This relationship, however, has not been studied in tobacco smokers who are susceptible to COPD.
In the new study, the research team looked for small genetic changes or "polymorphisms" in ADAM33 in 880 long-term heavy smokers.
Two hundred eighty-seven of the study subjects had COPD and 311 did not. All of them were older than age 50 years and all had been smoking at least a pack of cigarettes each day for 20 years. Ninety-seven percent of the subjects were male.
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Stroke: Well known Risk With New Prove

Smokers whose family members have had a type of bleeding stroke are six times more likely to suffer the same fate than people without these risk factors, according to a new study.
The stroke type known as an "aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage" -- essentially a burst blood vessel in the brain -- runs in families, note Dr. Daniel Woo and others in the medical journal Neurology, and they wanted to see if smoking added to the hereditary risk.
Their study, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, compared 339 patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage with 1016 "controls" without the condition, matched by age, race and gender
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