Herbal Health

Dr. Thomas Glynn of the American Cancer Society has a lot to say about lung cancer, and it doesn’t take long for him to say it. Here’s a transcript of a lecture he sometimes gives: “This is going to be easy. Don’t smoke. Thank you for listening.”

Smokers sometimes give themselves little talks, too: statements meant to make them and their loved ones think that they’ll somehow be able to smoke and not hurt themselves. Here are some of the most common – and error-ridden.

“I’ll stop when I’m older.” True, quitting smoking reduces your risk whenever you do it, but sooner is much better than later. In the words of the American Lung Association, “The more you smoke and the longer you smoke, the greater your risk of lung cancer.”

“I’ll get lots of antioxidants.” It was once thought that antioxidants like beta-carotene reduced lung cancer risk. But it’s a false friend, as several studies have shown. “Beta-carotene was actually found to be a culprit in the progression of lung cancer,” says Dr. Warren Heston of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. And, he adds, so may single supplements, such as lycopene. So much for that one.

“I’ll mat lots of vegetables.” They help, but there’s no salad bar big enough to offset the smoking risk. As a team of Harvard-affiliated researchers put it in a 1996 report on cancer prevention, “A smoker consuming the largest tolerable amounts of vegetables is still at much higher risk of lung cancer than a nonsmoker.”

“The smog is going to got me anyway.” Says who? “It’s really difficult to pin lung cancer on air pollution,” says Bill McDonnell, M.D., Ph.D., a medical officer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “There’s just not very strong evidence for that.” And even if there were, Dr. McDonnell points out, “cigarette smoking is in a class by itself, both in regard to the variety and amount of inhaled substances and with regard to its ability to cause cancer.”

“I’ll avoid other carcinogens” Indeed, there are some to avoid, most notably radon, which the EPA estimates is found at higher-than-acceptable levels in 1 out of 15 homes in the United States. On-the-job exposure to things such as asbestos, uranium, arsenic, and certain petroleum products is also something to look out for. But all of them are more dangerous when combined with smoking. And remember, another environmental hazard that causes the death of some 3,000 nonsmokers a year from lung cancer, according to the EPA, is none other than tobacco smoke-from other people’s cigarettes.

“I’ll catch it early.” That’s a good strategy for most cancers but usually hopeless for lung cancer. “By the time it’s detectable, it’s generally too late to do anything,” Dr. Glynn says. “If you go in for a chest x-ray and they find a tumor, the outlook’s not good.”

“Lots of people beat it” But most don’t. Lung cancer’s five-year survival rate is 13 percent, one of the lowest of all cancers. “It’s a virtually certain killer,” Dr. Glynn says. “You’re looking at a one in eight chance that you’re going to be alive in five years. And most people from the time of diagnosis are dead in two years.”

*5/36/5*

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Tags: Cancer

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 6:55 am and is filed under Cancer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.