WHAT TO EATTO BEAT LUNG DISEASE

Slash your risk by a quarter — by raiding the fruit bowl

ALL this week, we have highlighted the power of food to stop major preventable killers. Dr Michael Greger is the leading voice for the healing power of diet and lifestyle and, when we serialised his book How Not To Die in 2016, it became a UK bestseller. Now, he’s released a recipe book packed with tasty meals to make it easier to eat a wholefood, plant-based diet. Yesterday, we learnt how food can help to stave off diabetes and even more benefits of his Daily Dozen — the blueprint for a disease-busting diet. Today, he shows how a plant-based diet can protect you and your family against lung disease.

THE worst death I ever witnessed was that of a man dying of lung disease. He was wideeyed, gasping for air, his hands clawing at the bed. His lungs were filling with fluid and he was drowning.

Very sadly, there was nothing I could do. Our gaze remained locked as he suffocated in front of me. It felt like watching someone being tortured to death.

So go ahead and take a deep breath. Now imagine what it would feel like not to be able to breathe. We all need to take good care of our lungs.

In the UK, about 10,000 people are newly diagnosed with lung disease every week, and somebody dies from some sort of lung condition every five minutes — it represents 20 per cent of UK death from disease.

But a plant-based diet could help. Studies show a healthy diet may mitigate the DNA-damaging effects of tobacco smoke, as well as help prevent lung cancer from spreading.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which, in addition to shortness of breath, causes severe coughing, excess mucus production, wheezing, and chest tightness. But there is some good news: a healthy diet may help to prevent it or keep it from getting worse. This could be very important news for the 1.2 million sufferers in the UK.

Studies show the consumption of cured meat (bacon, ham and sausages) may increase the risk of COPD. This is thought to be due to the nitrite preservatives in the meat, which may mimic the lung- damaging properties of the nitrite by-products of cigarette smoke.

But data going back 50 years shows a high intake of fruit and vegetables is associated with good lung function. Just one extra serving of fruit each day may translate into a 24 per cent lower risk of dying from COPD. The more the better!

With each breath, we take in thousands of bacteria. Most microbes are harmless, but some cause potentially deadly diseases, such as influenza and pneumonia.

A plant-based diet may be able to boost your immunity and offer protection. In a 2012 study, elderly volunteers given five or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily had an 82 per cent greater protective antibody response to a pneumonia vaccine compared to those who ate two or fewer servings a day.

ASTHMA

ASTHMA is an inflammatory disease that is characterised by recurring attacks of shortness of breath, wheezing and coughing, which are caused by narrowed, swollen airways.

It affects 5.4 million people in the UK and claims three lives every single day. However, even asthma may be largely preventable with a healthier diet.

A study of more than 100,000 adults in India found that those who consumed meat daily, or even occasionally, were significantly more likely to suffer from asthma than those who excluded meat and eggs from their diets altogether.

Eggs (along with fizzy drinks) have also been associated with asthma attacks in children, along with respiratory symptoms.

But removing eggs and dairy from the diet can improve an

asthmatic’s lung function in as little as eight weeks.

The explanation for why diet affects airway inflammation may lie with the thin coating of fluid that forms the interface between your respiratory tract lining and the outside air.

The antioxidants in fruit and vegetables could help support the defensive action of this fluid, which acts as your first line of defence against the free radicals that contribute to asthmatic airway hypersensitivity, contraction and mucus buildup.

Certainly, research suggests a few extra daily servings of fruit and vegetables can reduce both the number of cases of childhood asthma and the number of asthma attacks among people with the disease.

When researchers in Australia tried removing fruit and vegetables from asthma patients’ diets to see what would happen, they found symptoms grew worse after just two weeks.

This occurred when they cut back to just one piece of fruit and two servings of vegetables a day — hardly a restriction by Western dietary standards.

When they greatly increased fruit and vegetable consumption (as recommended by my Daily Dozen) to seven servings a day, asthma attack rates were cut in half.

SMOKING

IF, DESPITE all the evidence and warnings, you’re currently a smoker, the most important step you can take is to stop. Now. Please.

The benefits of quitting are immediate because the human body possesses a miraculous ability to heal itself, as long as we don’t keep reinjuring it.

Just 20 minutes after quitting, your heart rate and blood pressure drop. Within weeks, your blood circulation and lung function improve and, within months, the sweeper cells that help clean the lungs, remove mucus and reduce the risk of infection start to regrow.

After a year without cigarettes, your smokingrelated risk of coronary heart disease drops to half that of current smokers. Within about 15 years of stopping smoking, your lung cancer risk approaches that of a lifelong nonsmoker — your lungs can clear out all that tar buildup and, eventually, it’s almost as if you never smoked at all.

But, while you wait, be reassured that simple dietary changes may help to roll back damage wrought by the carcinogens in tobacco smoke. Researchers rounded up a group of longtime smokers and asked them to consume 25 times more broccoli than average (just a single stalk a day). Compared to broccoliavoiding smokers, the broccolieating smokers suffered 41 per cent fewer DNA mutations in their bloodstream over ten days.

It is clear broccoli boosts the activity of detoxifying enzymes in the liver, helping to clear carcinogens.

So, as well as quitting, keep a close eye on your Daily Dozen to effortlessly boost your intake of vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower, to help prevent further damage.