People who are taking at least four servings of green salad every week and undertaking gardening once or twice a week have a reduced risk for developing lung cancer, regardless of whether or not they are smokers.
Dr. Michele Forman and his colleague research team presented the findings of this research study in the recently held ‘American Association for Cancer Research’s Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research conference’ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Dr.Michele Forman and colleagues from the ‘MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas’, examined data from an ongoing case-control study to develop separate epidemiologic risk assessment models for lung cancer in current, former, and never smokers.
Potential risk factors causing lung cancer included exposure to second-hand smoke and to dust; a cancer related family history, a history of respiratory disease in the index patient, and history of smoking. This model however revolves around certain limitations demonstrating modest discriminatory power.
With an objective to include information on diet and physical activity, the team of researchers collected numerous data on more than 3800 patients and controls using a ‘129-item modified National Cancer Institute-Block food frequency questionnaire’. Researchers then categorized all the responses in line with the ‘2006 US Department of Agriculture for food pyramid groups’. In addition to this, researchers also collected the physical activity reports of the participants for adult years.
Findings of this comprehensive study established that the participants who were not smokers and ate three or fewer servings of green salad per week had an odds ratio for lung cancer of 2.09 in comparison to those who ate at least four servings every week.
Similar results were also observed in case of those who have given up smoking. For existing smokers, the odds ratio for lung cancer was 2.73 for participants who ate three or fewer green salad servings every week compared to those who ate at least four servings per week.
Gardening activities made significant impacts on lung cancer risks. Participants who were non smokers and worked in a garden once or twice a week were 40-46% less likely to develop lung cancer compared to those participants who did no gardening activity.
The study demonstrated similar results in case of those have given up smoking. Among existing smokers, the risk for lung cancer was substantially reduced by 33-45% with gardening activities once or twice a week compared to those who did no such activity related to gardening at all.
The study established that adding physical activity and diet into the risk prediction model increased its discriminatory power to 64%, 67%, and 71% for never, former, and current smokers, respectively.
Dr Michele Forman commented in his concluding remarks on this study, “This finding is exciting because not only is it applicable to everyone, but it also may have a positive impact on the 15% of non-smokers who develop lung cancer.”
This article is the property of http://www.HealthHype.com
Copying and publishing any article from our site is strictly NOT allowed
I read in November in my Natural Healing Health Book, that greens - like turnips, kale, and mustard are equally benefical to healing the lungs when fighting an upper respiratory infection. This is not new news, the medical people are finally realizing that their knowledge is really limited to drugs, surgery, or “I don’t know, there is nothing we can do for you…”
God forbid they tell a ‘patient’ to go eat foods of quality, that are healing, beneficial, natural, without additives, and by the way, get some exercise!