Lung cancer.
Lung cancer is by far the top cancer killer and tobacco is the number one cause of death Man vs Food Guy Dies of Heart Attack period claiming about 17% of all Canadian deaths (20% in males and 12% in females). And it may come to no surprise that second-hand or “passive” smoking can be just as detrimental to your health. According to the Health Sciences Institute, an eight-hour shift spent working in a smoky environment may have the same effect on the cardiovascular system as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes!
Now, I don’t really need to go through this since most of you know that cigarettes are laced with toxic chemicals, many of which are carcinogens, as well as addictive substances including sugar, but what you may not realize is that carbon monoxide produced from tobacco smoke has a high affinity for hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is part of the red blood cell that transports oxygen. Well guess what? If all these carbon monoxide molecules fill up the hemoglobin bus, there’s not as much room for oxygen, and therefore, you cannot effectively oxygenate your tissue. Last time I checked, oxygen was somewhat important for life!
What about air pollution? If you think that running or cycling outdoors is your ticket to optimal health, don’t hold your breath. Actually, maybe you should! A study published last year in The Lancet revealed that the main trigger for a heart attack is not vigorous exercise or stress, it’s air pollution… and if you combine vigorous exercise, stress and air pollution all together, look out! Aerobic exercise can easily double or triple the amount of air you take in, which is bad news for your heart and lungs if that air is polluted. In fact, the American Lung Association claims that taking a jog in a heavily polluted city is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. In the wrong environment, aerobic exercise may actually promote cancer, not prevent it. Man vs Food Guy Dies of Heart Attack We’ll get back to this form of training a little later in the article.
Next on the list comes breast cancer for females and prostate cancer for males. Both tend to be a problem with estrogen. Yes, even prostate cancer is related to estrogen not testosterone contrary to popular belief. Dihydrotestosterone (or DHT for short) is an androgen, a male sex hormone that is 10 times more potent than testosterone. It is responsible for male pattern baldness and benign prostatic hyperplasia, and it can be a problem for the prostate, but only because estrogen does not allow it to be released!
For females the cumulative lifetime exposure to estrogen determines the risk of breast cancer. So what do we do? We give females a known carcinogen called the birth control pill to help control their menstrual cycles. And then when we suspect breast cancer, how do we diagnose it? With a mammogram, of course. However, the risk of a mammogram may be greater than the apparent benefit. A report from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in 2006 found that for every 2,000 women to have a screening mammogram, just one would have their life prolonged, but 10 would endure unnecessary and potentially devastating treatment! Furthermore, evidence from the National Cancer Institute indicates that mammograms could cause 75 cases of breast cancer for every 15 identified among women under the age of 35. And a Canadian study reported in NaturalNews.com found a 52% increase in breast cancer mortality in young women given annual mammograms. As functional medicine expert Dr. Robert Rakowski puts it, “Perhaps the thinking is let’s keep radiating the breast until we find the cancer that we caused!”
And for guys it’s no better. A prostate biopsy may contribute to the tumor spreading throughout the body! Actually, most males with prostate cancer will die from something other than the cancer itself Man vs Food Guy Dies of Heart Attack.
