Failing to Prevent the Consequences of Smoking

Less than 100 years ago, smoking was considered to be a healthy habit. Doctors sometimes even prescribed cigarettes to patients with the idea that it would help them control stress. In World War II, American soldiers, sailors, and marines were issued cigarettes along with beer and that ultimate military convenience food, SPAM and crackers.

For nearly 50 years, however, the medical establishment has been well aware of the consequences of smoking, heart disease, lung cancer, mouth and throat cancer, asthma, emphysema, and even rheumatoid arthritis. All of us, however, know people who smoke who don't get these dread diseases, and some of us know people get these horrible conditions but who did not smoke.

What makes the difference?

One difference is diet.

What doctors don't usually tell their patients is that healthy diet—although not always nutritional supplements—can offset many of the ill effects of smoking in many—although not all—smokers. Vegetables in the cabbage family, for instance, contain sulfur-bearing compounds known as isothiocyanates. The isothiocyanate in watercress, phenethyl isothiocyanate, is especially helpful for smokers. It neutralizes an enzyme in the liver that converts the nitrosamines in tobacco smoke into NNK, a cancer-causing chemical. About 10% of people, however, lack a gene that helps their bodies use isothiocyanates to fight cancer.

Smokers usually have low bloodstream levels of antioxidants. It's important not to get antioxidants from supplements. Smokers need to get their antioxidants from food. Smoking causes imbalances in antioxidants that can be made worse by taking supplements. A famous study in Finland in the 1990's found that giving smokers just beta-carotene supplements actually increased cancer deaths. Getting both alpha- and beta-carotene (what you get from eating a carrot rather than taking a beta-carotene supplement) decreases them.

It's not even a good idea for smokers to overdo fruits and vegetables. One study found that eating carrots and tomatoes every week lowered the risk of lung cancer, but eating them several times a day every day raised it. 

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And if you can't or don't want to quit, here are some things you can do to stay healthier:

• Treat seasonal affective disorder, the kind of depression that comes on in the fall and usually resolves itself in early spring. Caused by lack of sunlight, this kind of depression is treated by spending time under a sun lamp or in bright sunlight in the early morning. Smokers who don't treat seasonal affective disorder tend to smoke more in the winter.
• Don't smoke more just because your brand is labeled "silver," "gold," or "slim." These brands are just as harmful as any other cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes are no more likely to cause cancer than non-menthol cigarettes, but they can be harder to quit.
• Avoid smoking first thing in the morning. Smokers who light up within the first hour after waking up are 31% more likely to develop cancer.
• Don't smoke marijuana if you develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Marijuana smoke is even more damaging than tobacco smoke, although other forms of marijuana are not.

Some smokers are blessed with the genetics that detoxifies carcinogenic chemicals in tobacco smoke. Other smokers are not. By 2015, it will be possible to identify toxic chemicals associated with a high risk of cancer in a urine test—so that smokers at higher risk of cancer can plan accordingly.