Smoking (and diet) and respiratory health

[Guest guest]

Heidi cited:

> [From second-hand smoke,] Americans die of lung cancer, and 300,000

children suffer from lower

>respiratory tract infections.

____

When I was a young child, I grew up with two smokers, and never had any

respiratory problems. As a teenager, I smoked Marlboros, a pack or more a day.

I

had also taken to a high-sugar high-junk food diet. When I woke up, I drank

about 24 oz of Coke, followed by a breakfast of Toaster Struedells and powdered

iced tea. During this time, I developed chronic respiratory problems,

including breathing difficulty and a hacking cough. An herbalist my mom knew

suggested a tea to drink and had me cut out soda. Without a change in my

smoking

habits, I eliminated my respiratory problems by instituting these changes. The

tea was short term, and the respiratory problems did not recur when I

discontinued it.

The fact that I did not have respiratory problems from second-hand smoke does

not rule out the possibility that others do develop them. However, since my

respiratory problems appear to have been mostly diet-related, I think that

does suggest that those of others may also be. No one ever seems to consider

the

possibility that kids might develop respiratory infections or other such

problems because of diet.

How does smoke affect the lungs differently when a diet is

immune-suppressing? What is the difference in oxidative damage done when smoke

encounters lung

tissue dominated by PUFA from when it encounters lung tissue dominated by SFA?

In addition to the shoddy science dealing with tobacco, and in addition to

the failure to make a distinction between tobacco per se and tobacco cured by

methods unique to modern America and laden with toxic additives, it should also

be considered that diet may control the amount of damage done by tobacco smoke

as much as it controls the amount of damage done by other environmental

factors. Just like skin cancer may be more a function of carotene intake and

PUFA/SFA ratio than it is a function of sun exposure.

Price said the government of the Gaelics he studied blamed TB on the smoke

particles from the smoke-thatched roof, but Price found that because of the

nutritious diet the smoke-thatched roof users were the ones not suffering from

TB.

Again, consideration diet is completely absent from the bureacracies

perspective.

Chris