Lungs damaged by smoking can heal – study

Healthy cells can emerge to replace damaged areas, according to research published in Nature

Smokers can turn back time in their lungs by kicking the habit, with healthy cells emerging to replace some of their tobacco-damaged and cancer-prone ones, a study shows.

Smokers have long been told their risk of developing diseases like lung cancer will fall if they can quit, and stopping smoking prevents new damage to the body.

A study published on Thursday in the journal Nature found that the benefits may go further, with the body appearing to draw on a reservoir of healthy cells to replace smoke-damaged ones in the lungs of smokers when they quit.

Within a few years, the lungs of some former smokers showed no damage from tobacco, the research by Wellcome Sanger Institute said. Photograph: Christian Bruna/EPA

The study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the results should give new hope to smokers who want to quit.

“People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it’s too late to stop smoking – the damage is already done,” he said in a statement issued by the institute.

“What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it’s never too late to quit.”

Some of the people in the study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes in their life, he said.

“But within a few years of quitting, many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco.”

The study analysed lung biopsies from 16 people, including current smokers, ex-smokers, adults who had never smoked and children, looking for the mutations that can lead to cancer.

Genetic changes that appear in the body’s cells are a normal part of ageing, and many of these mutations are harmless so-called “passenger mutations”.

But a mutation in the wrong gene in the wrong cell can “dramatically change the behaviour of the cells and instruct them to behave more like a cancer”, Campbell told AFP.

“If enough of these ‘driver mutations’ accumulate, then the cell will become a full-blown cancer.”

The study found nine out of every 10 lung cells in current smokers had mutations, including those that can cause cancer.

But in ex-smokers, many of those damaged cells had been replaced by healthy ones akin to those seen in people who had never smoked.

Up to 40% of the total lung cells in ex-smokers were healthy, four times more than in their still-smoking counterparts.

Campbell said the damaged cells had not been able to “magically repair themselves”.

“Rather they are replaced by healthy cells that have escaped the damage from cigarette smoke.”

The precise mechanism by which that replacement occurs is not yet clear, but the study’s authors believe there may be a sort of reservoir of cells, waiting for a chance to emerge.

“Once the person quits smoking, the cells gradually proliferate from this safe harbour to replace the damaged cells,” Campbell said.

Gerd Pfeifer, professor at the Van Andel Institute’s Center for Epigenetics, praised the study in a review published by Nature.

“It has shed light on how the protective effect of smoking cessation plays out at the molecular level in human lung tissue,” wrote Pfeifer, who was not involved in the study.

Obtaining lung biopsies raises ethical concerns, meaning the researchers could only study 16 samples obtained from patients who had to undergo biopsies for separate medical reasons.

The small sample size could provide a caveat to the study’s findings, Pfeifer wrote.

But it “raises many interesting questions worthy of further investigation”.

Campbell said the key now would be to locate the reservoir of healthy cells and work out how they are able to replace damaged ones.

“If we can work out where they normally live and what makes them expand when someone stops smoking, perhaps we have opportunities to make them even more effective at repair.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Children in Delhi smoke 10 cigarettes a day just by breathing

The DIU analysed the pollution statistics of the national capital from 20 October to 21 November and found out that the city's air was so toxic that on average each resident inhaled smoke equivalent to puffing about 340 cigarettes.

Smoking is injurious to health'. We see this slogan pasted everywhere, from movie scenes to massive roadside banners. Smoking is also prohibited to minors. Yet, children in Delhi are smoking 10 cigarettes every day, just by breathing the city's toxic air. The India Today Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) found that, on an average, every Delhi resident smoked about 340 cigarettes between 20 October to 21 November because of the high pollution in the city's air.

Children in Delhi are smoking 10 cigarettes every day | REUTERS image for representation

The DIU analysed the pollution statistics of the national capital for 33 days, from 20 October to 21 November (till 5 pm) and found out that the city's air was so toxic that, on average, each resident inhaled smoke equivalent to puffing about 340 cigarettes.

This is calculated on the basis of the high level of Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) which is harming the lungs of every person in the city.

According to an analysis by Richard Muller and Elizabeth Muller of Berkley Earth, exposure to 22 micrograms per cubic metres of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking one cigarette a day. This means that if the PM 2.5 level in the air is 300, it will be equal to inhaling smoke of 14 cigarettes.

Using air pollution data provided by the Central Pollution Control Board, the DIU found that between 20 October to 21 November (5 pm), the average level of PM 2.5 for all the monitoring stations in Delhi was 227, which translates to 10 cigarettes per day.

Which day did you smoke the most?
The daily average of PM 2.5 for Delhi reveals that the maximum harm was done around Diwali.

The festival was celebrated on 27 October and this is when you can see that the levels of PM 2.5 started rising significantly. While on Diwali, polluted air was equivalent to smoking nine cigarettes, it spiked the next day to 14 cigarettes because of higher concentration of PM 2.5.

The toxicity in the air remained extremely high for seven consecutive days after Diwali. The situation was worst on November 3 when the average PM 2.5 level was 582, which is 23 times higher than the World Health Organisation's prescribed limit of 25 micrograms per cubic meters (24 hours mean). That was like smoking 26 cigarettes in just one day.

Toxic air is reducing your life
In a previousarticle published by the DIU, we had mentioned that Delhi's air is so toxic that it has cut down the average life expectancy of residents by almost 17 years.

Another terrifying fact is the number of deaths due to air pollution in the country. The DIU had analysed that the mortality rate because of toxic air is 134 per 1,00,000 people, which is almost double the global average of 64.

Dirty air spreads to Rajya Sabha
Last week, a high-level meeting was called by the Parliament's Standing Committee on Urban Development to discuss air pollution in Delhi. However, several politicians and government officials gave it a miss, including Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir, who were then trolled vehemently on social media.

But, politicians seem more serious about the matter now, with Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar listing several steps to combat Delhi's pollution. One of them is the urgent need to create urban forests.

(Source: India Today)

San Francisco to become first US city to ban e-cigarette sales amid vaping crackdown

'No person shall sell or distribute an electronic cigarette to a person in San Francisco' without FDA review, ordinance reads

San Francisco is set to become the first US city to effectively ban all sales of e-cigarettes amid an increasing crackdown on vaping products.

The city’s board of supervisors will reportedly pass an ordinance on Tuesday requiring any e-cigarette products sold in the region to have undergone a premarket review by the US Food and Drug Administration.

“No person shall sell or distribute an electronic cigarette to a person in San Francisco” without the review, the ordinance read.

Currently there is no e-cigarette product on the market nationwide that has underwent the administration’s premarket review, CNN reported.

The ordinance would likely pose difficulties for prominent makers of e-cigarettes like Juul Labs, which is headquartered in San Francisco.

The city’s board of supervisors passed an initial vote on the ordinance last week.

Officials have long argued e-cigarette products like Juuls are required to undergo the administration’s review process before it can be sold — and that their existence on the market speaks to a larger breakdown in processes and safety provisions put in place to promote public health.

“E-cigarettes are a product that, by law, are not allowed on the market without FDA review. For some reason, the FDA has so far refused to follow the law," Dennis Herrera, San Francisco’s city attorney, said in a statement after the initial vote.

"Now, youth vaping is an epidemic," he added. “If the federal government is not going to act to protect our kids, San Francisco will."

Meanwhile, the FDA has taken steps to remove e-cigarette products from the market in recent months, threatening to remove companies that sell flavoured tobaccos that can be enticing to underage consumers. The administration has also led an effort to get companies on board with regulations by issuing guidances on how they can file premarket tobacco product applications.

The FDA has been sued by health groups arguing the e-cigarette products should not be allowed to remain on the market until 2022 without such authorizations in place, as the FDA has allowed.

Juul Labs has argued against the ordinance, saying in a statement on Monday, “the prohibition of vapour products for all adults in San Francisco will not effectively address underage use and will leave cigarettes on shelves as the only choice for adult smokers."

(Source: Independent)

Has legal cannabis killed the bong?

Under cannabis prohibition, nothing signified one’s love of the plant more than bongs – but health-conscious users who prefer to vape don’t have much use for them

In the stoner culture that flourished under cannabis prohibition, nothing signified one’s love of the plant more clearly than the water pipes known as bongs. This was for practical as well as symbolic reasons. Bongs offer more smoke and a smoother hit than pipes or joints. Whether in use or not, they convey a clear message: marijuana is smoked here.

They have been used to smoke cannabis since antiquity. When someone is sucking on a bong, mouth agape inside a glass tube, it’s a pose of the purest hunger, like a baby goat sucking on an udder. Users often named their bongs. To the fraternity of underground cannabis users, they were akin to sacred totems.

But with legalization under way, bongs have an image problem. The “wellness”-obsessed cannabis industry doesn’t have much use for them. Health-conscious users prefer to vape or eat cannabis than combust it. The bong as centerpiece of a room also isn’t a good fit for the industry’s new ethos, echoed in the slogan of the magazine Gossamer: “For people who also smoke weed.”

 ‘To the fraternity of underground cannabis users, they were akin to sacred totems.’ Illustration: George Wylesol

Simultaneously, the heaviest cannabis users have gravitated away from flower to stronger THC concentrates that they consume with dab rigs, contraptions that can look like bongs but are used to vaporize the drug with the help of a blow torch. Popular new products such as the PuffCo Peak and Vapexhale look like bongs and can be called bongs, but they are vaporizers, not pipes.

Even so, smoking accessories remain a sizable industry. In 2013, US head shops generated $10bn in revenue, about the same size as the 2018 legal US cannabis market.

Harrison Baum, CEO of Daily High Club, an online head shop that sends a monthly box of smoking accessories to subscribers, said today bongs were “a niche, but a very big niche”, popular with younger people and nostalgists in their 50s and 60s reliving their college days.

In four years, Baum said, the company had sold more than 300,000 bongs. Popular models include the “southern dabber”, which features a dab rig’s smaller chamber inside a bong chamber, and the “road rasta”.

In the early days of the green rush, Jane West, an event planner and mom in suburban Denver, made a name for herself throwing upscale pot parties, at least one of which featured a working bong ice sculpture. Today she has released a line of smoking accessories, including a glass bong called a “beaker” that would look at home on a tastefully appointed shelf next to a wine decanter. Its chamber is meant to approximate a person’s lung capacity.

Meanwhile, upscale head shops have popped up in places like the Los Angeles branch of the swank department store Barney’s.

There’s a parallel with sex toys. Once hidden behind counters, they now boast serious design credentials and can be bought in attractive shops, with chipper attendants happy to “educate” consumers about their various properties. And a community of glass workers has elevated elaborate bongs into a form of folk art, with pieces by well-known artists selling for more than $10,000.

So, yes, the bong is gentrifying. And it may always have its fans – as West says: “There’s nothing that compares.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Where does cancer come from? We must talk about preventable risk

Most people know about the link between smoking and cancer but few are aware of the other major and controllable lifestyle factors

Although my patient constantly and laughingly referred to himself as a “vegetable”, I never got used to it. I cringed at the expression, often wondering how he really felt beneath the smiles. Short in height and morbidly obese, he hated moving and told everyone how much he loved fat and sugar, preferably together. The first time I met him he struggled to walk the few metres to my room before crashing into a chair and clutching its sides as he regained his breath. He was only 57 years old.

Just before starting chemotherapy he developed a urine infection. His symptoms settled quickly but even I was surprised at the way he became deconditioned. Previously able to get to the bathroom, now he would collapse in bed with each attempt to get up. Then he developed a hospital-acquired pneumonia and nearly died. It was assumed that cancer caused his deterioration, but the real culprit was his dismal lack of fitness. Ultimately, I witnessed my patient’s treatment, and then his life, compromised by habits encompassed by the benign-sounding term “lifestyle factors”. Unfortunately he was neither the first nor the last patient of this kind.

Recently,  to a growing body of evidence that a large proportion of cancers are preventable. The researchers studied known groups of cancer risk factors including smoking, diet, weight, physical inactivity and infections such as hepatitis C and human papillomavirus and estimated that of the 44,000 cancer deaths annually in Australia, 17,000, or nearly 40%, are potentially preventable. This figure mirrors those stated by Cancer Research UK, the American Cancer Society and the World Health Organisation.

‘It’s tricky at the best of times to tell someone to lose weight or drink less but it’s
even harder to tell a patient that a cancer diagnosis might have been preventable if
not for a host of lifestyle decisions’ Photograph: Mark Bowden/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Reflecting on the “untold grief and heartache” that cancer causes, the researchers remind us that even small improvements in our lifestyle have the capacity to translate into important health gains. On current trend, one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer by age 85. To reduce this risk, they suggest we make better dietary choices, eat a little less, move a little more, don’t smoke, curb drinking, and lose some weight. They’re right, of course. The frustration lies in seeing knowledge translated into action.

Every cancer clinic is witness to the end result of a series of lifestyle choices gone wrong. The middle-aged truck driver with lung cancer who has spent 20 years on the roads, with cigarettes, soft drinks and fast food for company. The obese, sedentary office worker suddenly diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer. The scores of men and women with obesity, emphysema, diabetes, heart and kidney disease, before facing cancer as a final insult. Everyone seems surprised that these chronic health conditions can imperil just as much as cancer.

Listening to patients provides insights into how their lifestyle came to be so. Some people can’t afford the cost premium of fresh fruit and vegetables and their living or working conditions make regular exercise difficult, if not impossible. Some people smoke because that’s what their whole family does. They drink because to refrain would be considered abnormal among their friends. Everyone in their family is on the large side, so they haven’t thought of themselves as overweight.

Smoking impairs response to cancer treatment. Obesity increases recurrence risk. Lack of fitness portends hazardous complications. Poor diet hampers immunity. There is common awareness of the link between smoking and cancer but few people are aware of the other major and controllable risk factors. Mostly, they think that cancer happens due to bad luck and bad genes.

Oncologists are no strangers to the plentiful associations between lifestyle and cancer but while I have no illusions about changing human nature in the course of a few appointments, it never fails to strike me how seldom we broach lifestyle. For one, it’s easier to prescribe chemotherapy than to counsel patients about their habits. In the short time available, it is expedient to stick to the necessary conversations which tend to be about diagnosis and management. It is increasingly challenging to adopt a long-term and holistic view of the person behind the cancer but this shortcoming undoubtedly hurts patients.

Giving chemotherapy is the easy part. Linking a patient into accessible, publicly funded, sustainable harm reduction programs, whether related to diet, exercise, smoking, drugs or alcohol is surprisingly difficult. There is enormous geographic and socioeconomic variation in access to such services – the employed executive with generous leave arrangements can find several options within easy reach but things aren’t so easy for the unemployed single mother who is also the carer for her disabled son. She is much more likely to retain all the factors that led to cancer development in the first place that will now claim her life.

One might ask if we shouldn’t take personal responsibility for getting healthy but recidivism rates are high because poor health habits are addictive and people need more structured help than simply being told to quit. The result of gaps in public health policy is a failure of primary prevention that leads to expensive hospital-based care, which is ill-equipped to change long-term health indicators.

When it comes to communicating risk, cancer occupies a unique and unfortunate space. Societies are aware about the dangers of unprotected sex. Mothers know why childhood vaccination matters. Public transport carries the warning features of a stroke. But the origin of cancer remains shrouded in mystery even as researchers peel back the layers.

It’s tricky at the best of times to tell someone to lose weight or drink less but it’s even harder to tell a patient that a cancer diagnosis might have been preventable if not for a host of lifestyle decisions. By sidestepping a conversation about risk factors we miss an important opportunity for educating the patient, concerned relatives and the broader community.

The conversation about cancer has always been framed as a battle. With its powerful imagery of productive lives laid to ruin cancer evokes fear, powerlessness and devastation like none else. It is widely perceived as a mysterious, insidious, and ultimately hopeless condition. For a disease where the patient never feels in charge, what the Australian researchers provide us is hope. Hope that knowing the risk factors is a step towards modifying them. Hope that like other diseases we have demystified, there are things we can do to prevent cancer.

While some of us have heard of someone who never smoked or drank, ran marathons and still got cancer, we all know someone who was obese or smoked or drank excessively who got cancer. Everyone deserves our sympathy and understanding but it would be even better if their experiences taught us something. A striking proportion of cancers are preventable. We ought to be grateful to the Australian researchers for showing us the way.

(Source: The Guardian)

Can your language influence your spending, eating and smoking habits?

An absurd-sounding claim leads to a surprising finding. Speakers with weak future tenses demonstrated dramatically, and statistically significantly, more responsible future-oriented behaviors, writes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. Read on: 

Yes, I know. That headline. It looks like the most egregious form of causal inference. Americans don't save money because of ... our grammar? How utterly absurd. But bear with me.

In the 1930s, linguists proposed that the way we read, write, and talk helped to determine the way we see the world. Speakers of languages that had the same word for orange and yellow had a harder time actually distinguishing the colors. Speakers of the Kook Thaayorre language, which has no words for left and right, must orient themselves by north, south, east, and west at all time, which enhances their awareness of geographical and astronomical markers.

Last year, economist Keith Chen released a working paper (now published) suggesting speakers of languages without strong future tenses tended to be more responsible about planning for the future. Quick example. In English, we say "I will go to the play tomorrow." That's strong future tense. In Mandarin or Finnish, which have weaker future tenses, it might be more appropriate to say, "I go to the play tomorrow."

Chen wondered whether languages with weak future tenses would be more thoughtful about the future because they consider it, grammatically, equivalent to the present. He mapped stronger and weak future-tense languages across Europe and correlated the data with future-oriented behaviors like saving, smoking, and using condoms.

Remarkably, he discovered that speakers with weak future tenses (e.g. German, Finnish and Estonian) were 30 percent more likely to save money, 24 percent more likely to avoid smoking, 29 percent more likely to exercise regularly, and 13 percent less likely to be obese, than speakers of languages with strong future tenses, like English.

If your B.S. antennae are standing straight up (as mine were), you might be more interested in this next part. Chen next compared speakers born and raised within the same countries, as well, controlling for factors like age and number of children. He found the same results: Speakers with weak future tenses demonstrated dramatically, and statistically significantly, more responsible future-oriented behaviors -- even within countries like Switzerland, which are a motley blend of strong-future languages (like French) and weak-future languages (like German).

The whole paper -- from its credulous claims to its surprising conclusions -- is summed up rather elegantly in this video by Fractl , the creative team for eBay Deals.

The correlation was savaged by some economists and linguists as facile or worse. But others re-ran the data and found, to their astonishment, that Chen seemed to be right. His paper was published (along with thanks to some of his fiercest critics) in the American Economic Review this year.

"One important issue in interpreting these results is the possibility that language is not causing but rather reflecting deeper differences that drive savings behavior," Chen concluded. Languages map to large groups of people, but so does religion, culture, family values, and a common history. Are Germans frugal because their language protects them from hyperbolic discounting, or is it just that, well, they're Germans?

That question doesn't have a satisfying answer, but this paper, as wild as it seems, isn't a radical departure from the literature. "Overall, my findings are largely consistent with the hypothesis that languages with obligatory future-time reference lead their speakers to engage in less future-oriented behavior," Chen wrote.

What does it mean? I have no idea, and Chen himself has responded to the criticism of his work with an honorable blend of erudition and shrugging disbelief. But I suppose that if you suffer from issues like crippling procrastination, as I do, it couldn't hurt to learn Estonian -- or, perhaps more simply, to write inspirational notes to yourself exclusively in the present tense. The future might be a different country, but it doesn't have to feel that way.

Non-smokers get 6 days extra paid leave at Japanese firm

Japanese company is granting non-smoking employees an extra six days of paid holidays a year after they complained that they were working more than staff who took time off for cigarette breaks.

Tokyo-based marketing firm Piala Inc. only introduced the non-smokers' perk in September, but employees have been quick to take advantage.

"One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems", said Hirotaka Matsushima, a spokesman for the company.

"Our CEO saw the comment and agreed, so we are giving non-smokers some extra time off to compensate", Mr Matsushma told The Telegraph.

Resentment among the non-smokers grew because the company's head office is on the 29th floor of an office block in the Ebisu district of Tokyo.

Anyone wanting a cigarette had to go to the basement level, with each smoking break lasting around 15 minutes.

"I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion", Takao Asuka, the Piala Inc CEO, told Kyodo News.

To date, no fewer than 30 of the company's 120 employees have taken additional days off under the new system since it was introduced, said Mr Matsushima - himself a non-smoker who has used the additional paid holidays to take his family to a hot spring resort for a couple of days.

The scheme has also encouraged four people to give up smoking, he added.

According to the World Health Organisation, 21.7 percent of Japanese adults smoke, although the figure is higher among males and older generations.

Japanese companies are increasing efforts to protect employees from the impact of second-hand smoke, with Lawson Inc, an operator of 24-hour convenience stores, in June banning smoking in its head office and regional offices.

(Source: The Telegraph)

Agarbatti smoke could be as dangerous as cigarette smoke

Scientists have discovered that aggarbatti smoke can cause genetic changes leading to cancer.

No Indian puja is ever complete without ringing of bells and showing agarbattis (incense sticks) to the deities.

Millions of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians use these to purify and freshen the air, and as an essential part of their holy ceremonies.

But there is a reason you should think twice before lighting another incense stick, especially if you take pride in being a non-smoker. According to a number of studies, you might be inhaling something more dangerous than the cigarette smoke itself.

We know what you're thinking: What danger could the harmless looking, traditional incense-stick can cause?

Well, according to some scientists in China, you might be putting yourself and your loved ones at the risk of cancer, by inhaling aggarbatti fumes.

The study conducted by the scientists in South China University of Technology--on two of the most common types of incense-sticks, agarwood and sandalwood--revealed that this everyday ritual of using agarbattis causes much more harm than good to your health.

According to The Quint, researchers found that incense-smoke was mutagenic (causes DNA changes at cell level), genotoxic (causes genetic changes leading to cancer) and cytotoxic (so toxic that it kills your cells).

In other words, incense fumes pose a higher risk of cancer than cigarette smoke.

Another study in the Journal of the American Cancer Society said that the long-term exposure to agarbatti fumes put you at an increased risk of upper respiratory tract cancer, The Health Site reported.

If this wasn't enough, fumes of agarbatti contains hazardous particulates and volatiles that pose grave health risks.

The pollutants released from these fumes cause inflammation of the bronchial tubes, which pass air to the lungs. This may result in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

Also, high concentration of these hazardous fumes is also known to trigger neurological problems including migraines, headaches and forgetfulness.

What should you do?
1. It is of utmost importance that one does not light incense-sticks or dhoops at all, when kids are around, as smoke from any source has a harmful effect on the lungs.

2. One should only burn agarbattis when absolutely essential, and that too in an area which has proper ventilation.

3. Patients with respiratory problems should steer clear of incense sticks.

So, the next time you light incense sticks to please the almighty, do keep in mind that they generate severe indoor air pollution including carbon monoxide, which can cause serious health issues.

(Source: India Today)