Lung Cancer is
Attributable To Smoking

Lung cancer is a horrible disease. It produces uncontrolled cell growth on the tissue of lungs that quickly spreads throughout the body. It can be painful, and it's definitely deadly. Usually, once a person has been diagnosed with lung cancer, the mortality rate is around 85% within the first year. It creates the most common form of cancer-related deaths in men, number two in women, and the biggest contributor to lung cancer is smoking.

Tars and other chemicals are ingested into the body while smoking in a heavy concentration. It's estimated that a combination of 4,000 chemicals can be contained in the particles that enter the body during smoking, and many of those chemicals are known to cause cancer. Many of those end up in the lungs, which helps filter poisons out of the air as a normal course of action. However, with smoking, the lungs don't have a chance to work properly, and, just like emphysema, can cause a plethora of symptoms that include shortness of breath, coughing up blood, chronic coughing, wheezing, chest pain or pain in the abdomen, weight loss, fatigue, loss of appetite, and difficulty swallowing.

Around the world, 90% of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking. Lung passed breast cancer as the number one killer in 1987, and is still holding onto that position, yet receives less funding. Smoking accounts for 90% of lung cancer deaths in men in the United States, compared to 85% in American women; this equates to around 443,000 premature deaths a year. A new study shows that women smokers get cancer earlier than men. And, another new study shows that the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking has increased because of design changes in cigarettes.

One of the frightening studies about smoking and lung cancer involve people who inhale second hand smoke. Female spouses of smokers are 20% likely to develop lung cancer; strangely enough, male spouses of female smokers are 30% likely to develop it. And people who work in areas where there's cigarette smoke, who don't smoke themselves, are 15% likely to get lung cancer, and those percentages go up for workers in places such as bars and restaurants that allow smoking.

There does seem to be a little bit of help on the horizon. A Chinese study concluded that a high intake of vegetables and fruit drastically reduces the risk of lung cancer. The study included 218 individuals with lung cancer and 436 individuals who did not have lung cancer or other smoking-related disease. It showed that:

• Individuals consuming the largest amount of vegetables had an approximate 60% reduced risk of developing lung cancer
• Individuals consuming the highest amount of fruits had an approximate 25% reduced risk of developing lung cancer
• Smokers derived greater benefit from high vegetable and fruit consumption in terms of a reduction in the risk of developing lung cancer compared to non-smokers; however, non-smokers who consumed a large amount of vegetables and fruit also had a significantly reduced risk of lung cancer.

This is significant because it was already known that smokers eat less healthy food overall than everyone else, and have always been encouraged, once they stopped smoking, to increase their input of fruits and vegetables.

Most incidences of lung cancer, like emphysema, could be prevented if we could eliminate smoking from the world. Also, like emphysema, once a person has lung cancer, it can't be reversed. But if a person can stop smoking early enough, their body could recover to the point where they're at no more risk of lung cancer than people who never smoked in the first place.

© Smoke Not So Much 2009

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