LifeCare Chiropractic

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Lung Health

More Than 300 Regularly Prescribed Medicines Can Damage the Lungs – (10-16-00)

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More Than 300 Regularly Prescribed Medicines Can Damage the Lungs

In many condition, we need to start weighing more heavily the risk vs benefit of commonly prescribed drugs. I truly believe, if careful attention was paid to the potential and actual side effects, and patients were given full disclosure of the harmful side effects, the high use of many pharmaceuticals would drop.

(article) The warning issued at the first World Congress on Lung Health and Respiratory Diseases in Florence is clear: there are hundreds of medicines routinely prescribed against a variety of disorders, including high blood pressure, allergies, rheumatism, certain cancers, and common nonrespiratory inflammations, that can cause all kinds of lung diseases. These accidents can happen within a very short time or after several years. They are mostly unpredictable and some are irreversible, leaving damaging after-effects. This was revealed at a postgraduate course on iatrogenic lung diseases presented by Professor Philippe Camus of the University Medical Centre of Dijon, France, who is also a member of the Clinical Assembly of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), organizer of the Congress. The researcher told his audience that so far 310 therapeutic substances have been identified as having such iatrogenic effects. “This means the number is really much greater if you consider that each active principle in a preparation is usually marketed in several different forms. The problem was practically unknown 25 years ago, but it is now taking on alarming proportions,” the French lung expert added. Yet the information provided with the packaging rarely warns patients that the medicine could potentially cause a lung disorder, and few doctors give the matter due thought when they prescribe a treatment. This is a pity, according to the specialists attending the World Congress in Florence, because in about 70% of cases, the early withdrawal of the medicine would increase the patient’s chances of avoiding the damaging sequelae, and very often the medicine concerned could simply be replaced with another. The Dijon team has posted their research on a Web site (http://www.pneumotox.com).

Diet Affects Lung Health – (10-09-00)

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Diet Affects Lung Health

Many patients today are looking for quick fixes to their problems, whether that fix is a prescription drug or an herb or vitamin depends on the current attitude in healthcare. But man will never be able to even come close to mimicing nature. Because of this, diet also has and always will have incredible power in improving and maintaining health.

Breathing and eating are known to interact with each other, for better and for worse, and the food people choose to eat may lastingly affect respiratory function. At the World Congress on Lung Diseases in Florence, Italy, many scientific communications have attempted to unravel the complex relations between respiratory disorders and food. A recent large-scale survey conducted on 3000 men in Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands found that regular consumption of fruit and green vegetables improved respiratory capacity. In Italy, this benefit is believed to be due to the vitamin C contained in fresh fruit, whereas in Finland the effect would stem from the vitamin E found in abundance in vegetable oils. In the Netherlands, the scientists concluded that the protective effect was due to the beta-carotene contained in berries or yellow pulp fruit and in vegetables. A British team reported, after analyzing the lung capacity of 2500 Welshmen, that eating apples was a good way to ward off respiratory diseases. The expiratory volume of subjects who ate 5 apples a week was 140 mL greater on average than that of persons who ate none. These examples show clearly how food can affect breathing. But the reverse is also true, as was noted at the World Congress on Lung Diseases, and some disorders classified at first sight as respiratory diseases may affect the nutritional condition of patients.