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.