There’s more to lung cancer than smoking, say experts

The lady senator who could unleash a lungful of puns and exposés and breathe life to countless social media memes shocked the nation once more last week when she dropped the bombshell about the true state of her health.

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago announced in a press conference that she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She said she had never smoked. It wasn’t clear, though, if the senator was a constant victim of secondhand smoke.

People who have never smoked, who do not drink heavily and who have exercised and have been health conscious all their lives are being diagnosed with lung cancer. The most obvious question: Why?

Contributing factors

In the book “Outsmart your Cancer” by journalist Tanya Harter Pierce, some of the most telling cancer-contributing factors of modern living were cited. These are modern diet (not enough fruits and vegetables, too many cooked and processed food, food grown in depleted soils, too much refined sugar, flour and sweeteners), modern environment (exposure to pesticides, herbicides and chlorine byproducts) and modern lifestyle choices and treatments (cigarette smoking, birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy for menopause, etc).

“Nature’s Cancer Fighting Foods” by Verne Varona, a nutritional counselor in oriental medicine, cited a 1989 nutrition and cancer study that showed excessive levels of a cow’s milk protein called beta-lactoglobulin being discovered in the blood of lung cancer patients. The study also stated that even non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was linked with excessive consumption of butter and cow’s milk.

Medical research suggests that animal proteins, specifically dairy proteins, play a role in the development of this cancer of the immune system.

Beta-carotene intake

“The Cancer Therapy” by research scientist Ralph Moss, PhD, cited a study by scientists at Chicago’s Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital and Northwestern University School of Medicine which showed beta carotene’s health effects.

The scientists gained access to blood samples and histories of employees of Western Electric—a large manufacturer of telephone equipment—first in 1957, after one year and then again 19 years later. They followed up on nearly 2,000 middle-aged men and were able to show that a below-average intake of beta-carotene often preceded the development of cancer.

Dangerous practice

“One surprising finding was that cigarette smokers who had relatively high levels of beta-carotene in their diet had a risk of lung cancer about the same as men who had never smoked but had lower levels of beta-carotene in the diet,” said Moss, who was interviewed by Inquirer Science/Health.

Moss added: “This meant that not eating carrots and other beta-carotene rich foods was a dangerous practice, analogous (as far as lung cancer was concerned) to regulate cigarette smoking. The more beta-carotene the men got, the less lung cancer they developed.”

“Oddly, the intake of pre-formed vitamin A in food such as liver, or through vitamin A supplement pills, did not significantly reduce the risk of lung cancer,” Moss said.