That's Fit

What smokers really need is to quit smoking. Well, if better health is a goal, anyway. Short of kicking the habit, though, there is something smokers can do to protect themselves against lung cancer: Eat three servings of fruits and vegetables per day and drink green or black tea.

That's what UCLA cancer researchers say now that they've completed their first-of-its-kind study. They found that high levels of natural chemicals called flavonoids in smokers' diets translated into a lower risk of lung cancer. This is a promising finding since 90 percent of lung cancers are caused by tobacco smoking.

Smokers most protected from the disease are those who ate catechin, found in strawberries and green and black teas, kaempferol, found in Brussels sprouts and apples, and quercetin, found in beans, onions, and apples.

Genetics may be to blame for hooking some people on cigarettes. Genetics may make some smokers more prone to lung cancer too, say three new studies. This is the strongest case so far for the biological foundation of nicotine addiction.

Scientists have pinpointed genetic variations related to smoking that could one day lead to screening tests and customized treatments for those trying to kick the habit.

The gene variations, which govern nicotine receptors on cells, could help explain some of the mysteries of chain smoking, nicotine addiction, and lung cancer -- like why a 90-year-old lifetime smoker never gets cancer, why some people can occasionally light up and never get hooked, and why some people have such a hard time quitting.

Initially, researchers are pretty certain that a smoker who inherits these genetic variations from both parents has an 80 percent greater chance of lung cancer than a smoker without the variants. That same smoker tends to light up two extra cigarettes a day and has a much harder time quitting than smokers who don't have these genetic differences.

The three studies, funded by U.S. and European governments and published Thursday in the journals Nature and Nature Genetics, looked at more than 35,000 white people of European descent in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Blacks and Asians will be studied soon.

Newsflash: smoking is bad for your health. Okay so everyone knew that already, but until now the carcinogenic effect of cigarette smoke on lungs was not completely understood. Scientists knew the smoke caused cancer due to toxins, but how?

Now they've tracked it down to hydrogen peroxide contained in the cigarettes. By exposing human lung cells to cigarette smoke and hydrogen peroxide independently, they found the same cancerous development after a couple of days. Don't worry, this was done in a lab so nobody was sucking down peroxide for test results.

At any rate, the cells which were not exposed to anything were naturally clear of all signs. The connection has been made, so now companies can start making "safer" cigarettes without the chemical which they know causes cancer. Since they figured out exactly what triggers it, this could also lead to better treatment options!

Have fitness questions? Fitz has your answer. Our ThatsFit.com fitness expert -- and now your own virtual personal trainer -- will help you get fit, increase your overall health and do it in a fun way. Drop your questions here in the Comments section below and we'll choose two per week to publish on That's Fit! Learn more about Fitz here.

Q. Hi Fitz! My 12-year-old daughter has started getting into fitness, all on her own motivation. She's always been on the thin side, and is certainly a healthy weight...and a fairly healthy eater. She said she wants to work out to build muscle and put on a few pounds (certainly not what you usually hear from girls at that age group). I want to support her, but I also want to be sure she is doing things in a healthy age-appropriate way.

She lives with her dad and we live in different states, which certainly makes matters more complicated. If she lived with me we could figure out ways to exercise together. Her dad and his girlfriend are both overweight with unhealthy habits. Any suggestions on how to get started? And is there anything she shouldn't be doing yet or things I should look out for? Thanks, Judy

Hello Miss Judy. You ask a great question and are smart to be both excited and leery of the situation. A child of 12 eager to pursue true fitness is an absolute gift. It is also a perfect point for that child's parent to stop and evaluate the situation, to make sure it's addressed correctly.

During high school, I remember hearing kids say they would rather smoke marijuana than cigarettes because they considered pot "more natural." Apparently they thought a Native American peace pipe was comparable to a bong. At any rate, anyone smoking pot under this notion is in for a surprise. New studies indicate that smoking marijuana is much worse.

In fact, someone would have to smoke twenty cigarettes to get the equivalent damage that a single joint would cause. A team of researchers found out that individuals who smoke cannabis have five times the amount of carbon monoxide in their blood compared to those lighting up tobacco!

Not only that, but the concentration of carcinogens is significantly greater in weed as well. Because of this, research indicates marijuana damages the airways more than traditional cigarettes. These may come across as a bunch of reasons to ditch smoking weed as a deviant practice, but what about patients using medicinal marijuana? As we all know, pot in a controlled medical application sparks a lot of conversation. However, given these reasons, doctors may need to reconsider this treatment.

Did you know a mole doesn't need to be large or raised to be dangerous? How about the fact that just one alcoholic drink a day increases breast cancer risk by 10 percent? Aware of this one: Gaining more than 11 pounds after age 18 ups your risk for all types of cancer? Gain 20 pounds after age 18, ladies, and your risk of breast cancer is 40 percent higher. I wonder if pregnancy weight gain counts since I gained 50 and then 42 pounds and then got breast cancer 18 months later.

Here are four more shockers: (1) Frequent drivers are more likely to get skin cancer on the left sides of their bodies. (2) Too many imaging exams, like mammograms, are harmful to your health. (3) While breast cancer rates have dropped significantly for some populations of women, they haven't budged at all for Asian-Americans and Native Americans. (4) Living with a smoker pops your lung cancer risk up by 23 percent and spikes your breast cancer risk by 68 percent.

Ouch. These numbers numbers and facts sting a bit, don't they? Good thing we have some say in whether or not they come to haunt us. We can check out moles and take them to the dermatologist for annual screenings. We can limit our cocktails, lose weight, and wear sunscreen on our left sides. We can avoid smoking situations and urge those who live with others to take their butts outdoors. Clearly, it's up to us to take protective health action whenever possible. What will you do in light of these seven cancer considerations?

Red meat has been taking a bad rap, because apparently headlines want you to think it's cancer on a grill. One of the first hits it took was being linked to breast cancer in women. Now researchers are saying red meat is linked to lung cancer. Will the flogging ever end?

This research was serious about doing business. Half a million people took part in it, ages ranging from 50 to 71. Eight years later, they counted the number of cancer cases diagnosed. It was over 50,000. The results say that those with the highest elevated risk were among the people consuming the most red meat. By the way, red meat was considered anything beef, pork or lamb, which includes bacon, sausage, cold cuts, ham and hot dogs. Just shoot me now.

I'm still going to stand by the golden rule of moderation. A steak every now and then probably won't kill you. Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that all this processed stuff isn't 100% healthy in the long-run. Okay, I'm taking off the tinfoil hat now to use my cell phone while eating a burger.

Want a healthy recipe? Here's a sure thing. This recipe, which grew out of research and education projects supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, supports this group's goal of helping Americans keep their hearts strong by reducing their intake of calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium. If you like this one, you might want to give these others a try too.

Spicy Baked Fish

Ingredients

1 pound cod (or other fish) fillet
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt-free spicy seasoning
Non-stick spray

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350.
  
• Spray casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray (Canola makes a good one).
• Wash and dry fish. Place in dish. Drizzle with olive oil and seasoning mixture.
• Bake uncovered for 15 minutes or until fish flakes with fork. Cut into four pieces. Serve with a side of your choice -- make it veggies and you'll have one healthy meal.
  

Each serving -- this recipe makes four -- has 134 calories, 5 g fat (1 gram saturated), 60 mg cholesterol, less than 1 g carbohydrates, 0 g fiber, 21 g protein, 93 mg sodium, and 309 mg potassium.

Yummy.

Each week, we'll be offering original recipes and unique ways to use those Super Foods that pack nutritional power. After all, you are what you eat -- make it count!

I have pineapple on my mind because we just happen to have a fresh one in our house. It's been sliced and diced into nice little squares, and it sits in a Tupperware bowl in our fridge right now. My boys and I are happy to have this juicy fruit during a time when all of our favorites -- strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, watermelon -- are disappearing from the grocery store produce aisles. It's a great fruit for many reasons -- it's super for nibbling, super if you're in a pinch and need to grab a quick bite, super for school lunches, and well, it's just plain super.

Pineapple is a Superfood because of its healing power on the joints. A top source of bromelain, an enzyme that helps support joint health, pineapples have anti-inflammatory properties that can alleviate osteoarthritis. Bromelain also cleans up dead cells after injury, helps reduce inflammation related to asthma, and even inhibits the growth of malignant cells in both lung and breast cancer.

I caught a minute of ABC's The View on Tuesday and learned that co-host Whoopi Goldberg is trying to quit smoking. Good for her.

"I want to be done by December 15," Whoopi told her audience. A wise plan, considering smoking damages nearly every organ in the human body, is linked to 10 different cancers, and accounts for 30 percent of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Yet one in four Americans still light up.

Smoking is by far the leading risk factor for lung cancer. And it is far more dangerous for women than men. Now wrap your head around this fact: The nicotine found in cigarettes is as addictive as heroin. If that's not reason enough to stop smoking, I don't know what is.

I am happy for October and the overflow of breast cancer awareness packed into each of the month's 31 days. But I'm always a bit relieved when these days come to an end. It means I can get back to living, free of the bombardment of facts of figures, and cutesy slogans, and of all things pink.

I'm lucky to be surviving breast cancer and not another form of cancer. Breast cancer gets attention, funding, programming, and lots of great press. But it makes me feel selfish, spoiled, like I'm hogging too many of the resources that could be spread around to others doing battle with their own deadly diseases.

Where are the other awareness months? Actually, there are a few -- March is the National Colorectal Awareness Month, September is the Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month, May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month -- but we don't know much about them because people aren't shouting from the rafters about these critical causes, like they are about breast cancer.

New research out of Britain this week as researchers there stated that they have identified immune system proteins that may end up becoming early warning indicators of impending lung cancer.

Prevention and testing are generally keys to surviving any ailment, but those two terms are especially important in cancer cases. The ability to have an operable tumor or body-wide cancer spreading are in two completely difference universes -- and early detection is a large key in many cases.

The research centered on the detection of several 'autoantibodies,' which are used by the immune system as a precursor to certain bodily ailments. Researchers found that very high levels of at least one autoantibody were found in nearly 80 percent of the blood samples from lung cancer patients who participated in the study.

Researchers reported this week that a trio of genes actually work together to become associated with about 20 percent of lung cancer cases. That's millions of lung cancer cases per year -- quite a large amount.

As the medical art of genomics marches on, scientists said that understanding the way these genes work could be a large leap in preventing tumors form forming.

The three-gene mutation is found in 20 percent of non-small lung cancer cases, which comprises about 80 percent of all lung cancer, according to lead researcher on the study, David Mu. Gene-based therapy sure looks to have the potential to treat (and prevent) many types of cancer in the near future, and this is another sign that advances are indeed happening.

Toss those hot dogs, bacon, and cured meats you're planning to devour -- because they could just take your breath away.

According to an analysis published recently in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, people who munch on these meaty items have an increased risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD, the umbrella term for emphysema and chronic bronchitis, is the fourth leading cause of death in America and is primarily caused by smoking. Still, diet plays a role and while studies don't conclusively link eating habits with COPD, there does seem to be an association. Specifically, those who ate 14 or more servings of cured meat per month increased their odds of developing this condition by 80 percent.

I don't know about you, but 80 percent seems pretty significant to me. This, along with the fact that cured meats contain large amounts of nitrates -- linked to lung damage in animals -- is enough for me to steer clear of these iffy meats for the rest of time.

Some people experience it more than others, but I think most of us have gone through it at some point in our lives: that frustrating inability to get a deep breath when you're really nervous or anxious about something. This article I came across was published awhile ago, but it's got a great set of tips (complete with stick man illustrations!) on how to "reboot" your lungs and get over that annoying shallow breathing pattern we sometimes get stuck in.

If nervous breathing happens to you often how do you deal with it?