Good News About Cancer - and Your Lungs!

On Monday, the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer was published, and showed that cancer deaths fell by 2.1 percent each year from 2002 to 2004. That doesn’t sound like much, but the researcher who was the lead author for the report, David Espey called it “an encouraging finding.”

If you dig deeper into the report, however, you’ll find more encouraging news: Most of the top 15 cancers in both men and women experienced declines in death rates. This was true especially for lung cancer - in both men and women. The decline in lung cancer incidence and deaths probably are due to a drop in smoking rates. All I can say is “hooray!”

The statistics about lung cancer have personal meaning for me because my Dad died of lung cancer several years ago. The sad truth is that he was a smoker for many years (several packs a day) but quit several years before being diagnosed with lung cancer. After having part of his lung taken out surgically, he was healthy for five years. But then BAM! He was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to his spine, and eventually died of this cancer.

The sad truth is that if he had quit smoking earlier on he might have not had to battle lung cancer. Ten years after a smoker quits, his or her risk for cancer is cut in half.

During my Dad’s battle with cancer, the MD who treated him told us that smoking creates a fertile ground in the lungs for the growth of cancer. So the cancer that had spread to my Dad’s spine was a second cancer that had taken hold in his lungs.

The answer to all this? Don’t smoke - don’t start, and if you do smoke, stop. Smoking is absoutely toxic to the lungs. And not smoking is the ONLY way to avoid lung cancer. It makes me pretty angry to see the number of young people, especially young women, who smoke today - to lose weight, to ease stress, or to look cool. They don’t realize that they’re gambling with their health. They don’t realize that the only way to avoid the tragedy of dying from lung cancer is to stop smoking.

As you can tell, I’m a vehement anti-smoker. It surprises me, but a lot of people don’t know how dangerous smoking is. For instance, a recent study found that a significant number of people (40%) believe that living in a polluted city is a greater risk factor for cancer than smoking.

Smoking, is in fact, a much bigger risk factor for lung cancer than environmental pollution and it’s entirely preventable! Smoking contributes not only to lung cancer but to many different types of cancer, including cancers of the esophagus, breast, and pancreas among others.

So I’m glad that the new report had good news about lung cancer — it’s news we’ve been hoping and waiting for –good news after a lot of bad news about cancer, as far as I’m concerned.