Although most people know that smoking is a risk factor for developing several cancers, many still wrongly believe that smoking less is safe, says a new study. The researchers found that more than a third of the people they studied believe that smoking up to 10 cigarettes is not associated with any risk of lung cancer.
The results demonstrate powerfully that the war against smoking is far from over, said one of the researchers, Laurent Greillier from Hopital Nord in Marseille, France. The researchers analysed data from a representative survey of 1,602 French people aged between 40 and 75 years.
Among the whole sample population, 34% wrongly considered that a daily consumption of up to 10 cigarettes was not associated with any risk of lung cancer. “This finding is particularly impressive and threatening. It shows that relatively low cigarette consumption is considered as ‘safe’ for a lot of people. In our study, only half of subjects answered that there is no ‘safe’ cigarette,” Greillier noted.
“It seems that people are aware about the dangers of tobacco for health, but might consider that the risks are not for themselves, but only for other people,” Greillier said. The findings were presented at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland. – IANS
Orange glasses may help you sleep better
You may have a great night’s sleep if you put on orange glasses some hours before going to bed, says a study. Orange glasses have been found to block certain wavelengths of light emitted by electronic screens which hamper our sleep cycle, making it easier for us to sleep.
Studies have shown that light from the blue part of the spectrum, inhibits the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that helps people fall asleep. A Swiss study of 13 teenage boys showed that when the boys donned orange-tinted glasses — also known as blue blockers and shown to prevent melatonin suppression — in the evening for a week, they felt “significantly more sleepy” than when they wore clear glasses.
The boys looked at their screens for at least a few hours on average before going to bed, and were monitored. The findings were published in The Journal of Adolescent Health. Older adults may be less affected by blue light, experts said, since the yellowing of the lens and other changes in the ageing eye filter out increasing amounts of blue light.
But blue light remains a problem for most people, and an earlier study of 20 adults ages 18 to 68 found that those who wore amber-tinted glasses for three hours before going to bed improved their sleep quality considerably relative to a control group that wore yellow-tinted lenses, which blocked only ultraviolet light, The New York Times reported. — IANS
Broccoli helpful in preventing oral cancer
A new therapy containing broccoli sprout extract has been found to protect not only mice against oral cancer but also tolerable in a small group of healthy human volunteers, says a new study.
“People who are cured of head and neck cancer are still at very high risk for a second cancer in their mouth or throat, and, unfortunately, these second cancers are commonly fatal,” explained lead author Julie Bauman from University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute in the US. “So we are developing a safe, natural molecule found in cruciferous vegetables to protect the oral lining, where these cancers form,” Bauman noted.
Previous studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and garden cress — which have a high concentration of sulforaphane — help mitigate the effects of environmental carcinogens.
For the new study, mice predisposed to oral cancer were given sulforaphane for several months and the team found that it significantly reduced the incidence and number of tumours.
The researchers then treated 10 healthy human volunteers with fruit juice mixed with sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprout extract.
The volunteers had no ill-effects from the extract and protective changes were detectable in the lining of their mouths, meaning it was absorbed and directed to at-risk tissue. The researchers now plan to conduct a clinical trial that will recruit 40 volunteers, who have been curatively treated for head and neck cancer.
The participants will regularly take capsules containing broccoli seed powder to determine if they can tolerate the regimen and whether it has enough of an impact on their oral lining to prevent cancer. From there, larger clinical trials could be warranted, the researchers noted.
“We call this ‘green chemoprevention,’ where simple seed preparations or plant extracts are used to prevent disease,” Bauman noted. “Green chemoprevention requires less money and fewer resources than a traditional pharmaceutical study and could be more easily disseminated in developing countries where head and neck cancer is a significant problem,” Bauman said. The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. — IANS
