Excerpted from "A Year of Health Hints"
365 Practical Ways to Feel Better and Live Longer
Once upon a time, before cigarettes were invented and air was polluted, lung cancer was unheard of. Today, it's the leading
cause of death from cancer in men and women. (About 150,000 people develop lung cancer each year, and 85 percent of
them can thank cigarettes for the disease.) And in less than a decade, lung cancer deaths for white females have increased an
incredible 60 percent, replacing breast cancer as the most common cause of cancer-related death in women.
Lung cancer is especially deadly because the rich network of blood vessels that deliver oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the
body can also spread cancer very quickly. By the time it's diagnosed, other organs may be affected.
Symptoms of lung cancer include:
Chronic cough
Blood-streaked sputum
Shortness of breath
Wheezing
Chest discomfort with each breath
Weight loss
Fatigue
Depending on the type of lung cancer and how far it's spread, the diseased portions of the lung will be surgically removed;
radiation treatment or chemotherapy (or both) will follow.
Lung cancer is difficult to detect in its early, more treatable stages, so the best way to combat the disease is to prevent it. As
you might guess, you can do that by eliminating the single greatest cause of lung cancer--smoking cigarettes.
The risk of developing lung cancer is proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked per day. Anyone who smokes two or
more packs of cigarettes a day, for instance, runs a risk nearly 25 times greater than that of a nonsmoker (which means that
even smoking less than two packs a day still increases your chance of developing lung cancer). The longer a person smokes,
and the more deeply the smoke is inhaled, the greater the risk of getting lung cancer.