“Diabetes is a serious, long-term condition with a major impact on the lives and well-being of individuals, families, and societies worldwide. The global diabetes prevalence in 2019 is estimated to be 9.3% (463 million people), rising to 10.2% (578 million) by 2030 and 10.9% (700 million) by 2045 [1]. Population aging is also increasing dramatically throughout the world, especially in developing countries, creating pressures on the health system as well as social security services and policies. Nowadays, many people are familiar with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus, however, there is another form of diabetes that has just recently been identified, known as type 3 diabetes (T3DM). This lesser-known type manifests as insulin resistance within the brain and has major potential to impact neurocognition and contributes to the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease [AD]. AD has already been identified as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and the fifth leading cause of mortality in people 65 and older.”

National Library of Medicine – NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/)

It’s Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia Care Education Month.

At one time Alzheimer’s disease was a disease considered with unknown etiology (or cause).  Today it is considered different in the eyes of many in the medical profession.  By a Dr. Mercola a physician who founded Mercola.com (Mercola.com is now the world’s top natural health resource site, with over 1.5 million subscribers.) feels this about Alzheimer’s disease:    “The cause of the debilitating, and fatal, brain disease Alzheimer’s is conventionally said to be a mystery.”

While we know that certain diseases, like type 2 diabetes, are definitively connected to the foods you eat, Alzheimer’s is generally thought to strike without warning or reason.

That is, until recently.

Now, a growing body of research suggests there may be a powerful connection between the foods you eat and your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, via similar pathways that cause type 2 diabetes.  Some have even re-named Alzheimer’s as “type 3 diabetes.””

Can You Eat Your Way to Alzheimer’s?

In a recent animal study, researchers from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island were able to induce many of the characteristic brain changes seen with Alzheimer’s disease (disorientation, confusion, inability to learn and remember) by interfering with insulin signaling in their brains.

Know that faulty insulin (and leptin, another hormone) signaling is an underlying cause for insulin resistance, which, of course, typically leads to type 2 diabetes. However, while insulin is usually associated with its role in keeping your blood sugar levels in a healthy range, it also plays a role in brain signaling. When researchers disrupted the proper signaling of insulin in the brain, it resulted in dementia.

What does this have to do with your diet?  Let us go back to one of my articles on diabetes this week and how it impacts your diet.  It states “The foods we eat that contain starches, carbohydrates, calories are made up of sugar.  When food reaches our stomach in time digestion starts to take place where these foods are broken down in the stomach into individual or complex sugar molecules ( glucose being one of the most common and important ones).  The glucose then passes from our stomach into our bloodstream when it reaches the liver 60 to 80 % of the glucose gets stored in that organ turning glucose into inactive glucose that’s converted to glycogen.  The purpose for glycogen is when our glucose is low and our body needing energy we have this extra stored sugar, glycogen,  to rely on.  This is done by the liver which allows the sugar to be stored and released back into the bloodstream if we need it=energy,  since nothing is in our stomach at that time, in that case scenario).  When glucose=an active sugar, it is our energy for our cells and tissues and is a sugar ready to be utilized by the body where it is needed,  by many organs.  Think of a car for one moment, and what makes it run?  That would be gas/fuel for it to function.  The same principle with glucose in your bloodstream=fuel for the human body so we can function, for without it we wouldn’t survive.  That is the problem with a person that has diabetes.  They eat, they break the food down, the glucose gets in the blood but the glucose fuel can’t be used due to lack of or NO insulin at all.  Insulin allows glucose to pass into our cells and tissues to be used as energy/fuel for the body parts to work.  Glucose is used as the principle source of energy (It is used by the brain for energy, the muscles for both energy and some storage, liver for more glucose storage=that is where glucose is converted to glycogen, and even stored in fat tissue using it for triglyceride production).  Glucose does get sent to other organs for more storage, as well.  Insulin plays that vital role in allowing glucose to be distributed throughout the body.  Without insulin the glucose has nowhere to go.”

So how does this impact your brain thinking?

“This new focus on the Alzheimer’s/Diabetes/Insulin connection follows a growing recognition of insulin’s role in the brain. Until recently, the hormone was typecast as a regulator of blood sugar, giving the cue for muscles, liver and fat cells to extract sugar from the blood and either use it for energy or store it as fat. We now know that it is also a master multitasker: it helps neurons, particularly in the hippocampus and frontal lobe, take up glucose for energy, and it also regulates neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which are crucial for memory and learning.”  What is effected with Alzheimer’s disease? Your memory and learning,  So your diet plays a big role in Alzheimer’s disease.”                                                                                        

Over-consumption of sugars and grains is what ultimately causes your body to be incapable of “hearing” the proper signals from insulin and leptin, leaving you insulin resistant in both body and brain.  Alzheimer’s disease was tentatively dubbed “type 3 diabetes” in early 2005 when researchers learned that the pancreas is not the only organ that produces insulin. Your brain also produces insulin, and this brain insulin is necessary for the survival of your brain cells.

If You Have Diabetes, Your Risk of Alzheimer’s Increases Dramatically

Diabetes is linked to a 65 percent increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, which may be due, in part, because insulin resistance and/or diabetes appear to accelerate the development of plaque in your brain, which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. Separate research has found that impaired insulin response was associated with a 30 percent higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and overall dementia and cognitive risks were associated with high fasting serum insulin, insulin resistance, impaired insulin secretion and glucose intolerance.

A drop in insulin production in your brain may contribute to the degeneration of your brain cells, mainly by depriving them of glucose, and studies have found that people with lower levels of insulin and insulin receptors in their brain often have Alzheimer’s disease (people with type 2 diabetes often wind up with low levels of insulin in their brains as well). As explained in New Scientist, which highlighted this latest research:

What’s more, it encourages the process through which neurons change shape, make new connections and strengthen others. And it is important for the function and growth of blood vessels, which supply the brain with oxygen and glucose.

As a result, reducing the level of insulin in the brain can immediately impair cognition. Spatial memory, in particular, seems to suffer when you block insulin uptake in the hippocampus… Conversely, a boost of insulin seems to improve its functioning.

When people frequently gorge on fatty, sugary food, their insulin spikes repeatedly until it sticks at a high level. Muscle, liver and fat cells then stop responding to the hormone, meaning they don’t mop up glucose and fat in the blood. As a result, the pancreas desperately works overtime to make more insulin to control the glucose – and levels of the two molecules skyrocket.

The pancreas can’t keep up with the demand indefinitely, however, and as time passes people with type 2 diabetes often end up with abnormally low levels of insulin.”

“From symptoms and treatment, to management and medication—arm yourself with the knowledge to live well with diabetes.  The A1C test can be used to diagnose diabetes or help you know how your treatment plan is working by giving you a picture of your average blood glucose (blood sugar) over the past two to three months.  It can identify prediabetes, which raises your risk for diabetes. It can be used to diagnose diabetes.”

American Diabetes Association (https://diabetes.org/about-diabetes)

Diabetes is becoming more common in the United States.  From 1980 through 2011, the number of Americans with diagnosed diabetes has than tripled (from 5.6 million to 20.9 million).

DIABETES: The Signs & Symptom and How to control the them:

The signs and symptoms of Diabetes 1 or 2 with hyperglycemia (HIGH GLUCOSE LEVELS):

THINK OF THE 3 P’s=

1.)Polyuria-When all of sudden you are voiding urine.  Poly ,meaning alot, uria, meaning urine,; so a lot of urinating due to your body trying to void out of the body excess glucose in your urine can be a symptom of diabetes. This is a common symptom that causes the next symptoms due to your voiding a lot of urine which causes your body to lose fluid, being water with alot of glucose in the urine, and in return you become very thirsty with hungry. This gives you:

2.)Polydipsia= very thirsty

3.)Polyphagia=very hungry

This should be a red light for a diabetic with these one or all 3 symptoms to finger stick or glucose test themselves.   See where your glucose level is at and if over 200 this is why you have one or all of the “P” symptoms (listed above).

Other s/s of Diabetes consist of:

– Tingling / Numbness in the hands and feet (diabetic neuropathy)

-Very tired and fatigued

-Weight Loss (more common to see in Diabetes 1; most of the time Type II DM is due to obesity and noncompliance of a diabetic )

-Blurred Vision.

-Sores or diabetic ulcers especially in the lower extremities that do not heal; and if not healed, this can cause in time a severe condition.

Complications that can come about due to DIABETES:

Dental Disease – Diabetes can lead to problems with teeth and gums, called gingivitis and periodontitis.

Heart Disease – People with diabetes have a higher risk for HTN, heart attack and stroke.

Eye Complications – People with diabetes have a higher risk of blindness and other vision problems.

Kidney Disease – Diabetes can damage the kidneys and may lead all the way up to kidney failure.

Nerve Damage (neuropathy) – Diabetes can cause damage to the nerves that run through the body.  Particularly neuropathy can occur leading to no feeling to other complications occuring (Example diabetic with neuropathy keeps stepping on sharp items not feeling them making a wound develop causing a sore not to heal that leads into a diabetic ulcer that doesn’t heel leading to a foot amputation or worse below or above knee amputation it leads to in time).

Foot Problems – Nerve damage, infections of the feet, and problems with blood flow to the feet can be caused by diabetes.

Skin Complications – Diabetes can cause skin problems, such as infections, sores, and itching. Skin problems are sometimes a first sign that someone has diabetes. Sores that cannot heal due to constant high glucose in the body can lead into a severe condition=AMPUTATION of the foot or leg.

**. (At least 15 % of all people with diabetes eventually have a foot ulcer, and 6 out of every 1000 people with Diabetes have an AMPUTATION. Possibly first surgery with bypassing the blood can resolve the problem 100% or like many only temporary. It is based on your other medical history with how brittle the diabetes and how compliant you are in taking care of yourself with diabetes.   This is why you see with some diabetics amputations of the lower extremities, hardly ever a upper amputation which is usually due to trauma or smoking.***

All these complications are effected by hyperglycemia and in playing a part in the blood circulation of our body. Ending line the person is getting bad oxygenated blood supply sent to the lower extremities when the glucose is poorly controlled over a long time. Based on the principle of gravity; what happens here is the heart pumps our blood throughout our body and when it gets difficult for the organ to do its job due to thick high glucose blood than it has to compensate at some point. Simply a narrowing to a blockage is occurring in that lower extremity and the reason for this is it’s the furthest area from the heart=FEET/LEGS.

This can be caused by just thick high glucose blood flowing throughout the body making it difficult for the heart to pump as effectively as opposed to someone that doesn’t have hyperglycemia which over time leads to further complications (listed above).

Diabetes with constant high glucose blood levels can leaded into poor circulation causes the feet and lower leg to first become cool to cold to changing colors of pale to cyanotic (purple) which takes over weeks to months to years, depending on the patient. Then the tissue gets necrotic (black=dead tissue) and an amputation has to be done to save the person or else this will get infected locally, at first, going into a systemic infection causing the person to go into septicemia and expire.

REFERENCES for Part 1, Part 2 & 3:

1.)  Center for Disease (CDC) – “National Diabetes Fact Sheet”

2.)  NYS Dept. of Health –Diabetes

3.)  Diabetic Neuropathy.org “All about diabetic neuropathy and nerve damage caused by Diabetes.”

4.)  NIDDK “National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

5.)  National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NIDC) – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.       “Preventing Diabetes Problems: What you need to know”

“Diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy.

Your body breaks down most of the food you eat into sugar (glucose) and releases it into your bloodstream. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts like a key to let the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy.

With diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should or you have no insulin in the body being made. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream. Over time, that can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/diabetes.html)

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a complex chronic disease involving disorders in carbohydrate, protein, and fat metabolism and the development of macro-vascular, micro-vascular, neurological complications that don’t occur over a few nights or weeks or months.  It is a metabolic disorder in where the pancreas organ ends up causing many disruptions in proper working of our body.  The pancreas is both an endocrine and exocrine gland.

The problem with diabetes is due to the endocrine part of the pancreas not working properly.  More than 1 million islet cells are located throughout this organ.  The three types of endocrine cells that the pancreas excretes into our blood stream are alpha, beta, and delta cells.  The alpha cells secrete glucagon (stored glucose), beta secrete insulin, and delta secrete gastrin and pancreatic somatostatin.

A person with DM has minimal or no beta cells secreted from the pancreas, which shows minimal or no insulin excreted in the person’s bloodstream.  Insulin is necessary for the transport of glucose, amino acids, potassium, and phosphate across the cell membrane getting these chemical elements into the cell.  When getting these elements into the cells it is like the cell eating a meal and the glucose, being one of the ingredients in the meal, is used for energy=fuel to our body; the glucose inside the cells gets carried to all our tissues in the body to allow the glucose to be utilized into all our tissues so they can do their functions (Ex. Getting glucose into the muscle tissue allows the muscles to have the energy to do the range of motion in letting us do our daily activities of living, like as simple as type or walk).  The problem with diabetes is the glucose doesn’t have the insulin being sent into the bloodstream by the pancreas to transfer the glucose across the cell membrane to be distributed as just discussed.  Instead what results is a high glucose levels in the blood stream outside the cells causing hyperglycemia.  Remember when a doctor has you go to the lab or even in his office getting blood drawn from your arm to check blood levels of electrolytes (like glucose, potassium, sodium) or even drug levels, its measuring only these elements outside the cell. We cannot measure the levels of these elements inside the cell or we would have to break the cell destroying it which makes no logic or help in diagnosing.

It should be apparent that when there is a deficit of insulin, as in DM, hyperglycemia with increased fat metabolism and decreased protein synthesis occur ( Our body being exposed to this type of environment over  years causes the development of many chronic conditions that would not have occurred if DM never took place in the body, all due to high glucose levels starting with not being properly displaced in the body as it should be normally since insulin loss didn’t allow the glucose to go into the cells but remained outside the cells.).

People with normal metabolism upon awaking and before breakfast are able to maintain blood glucose levels in the AM ranging from 60 to 110mg/dl.  After eating food the non-diabetic’s blood glucose may rise to 120-140 mg/dl after eating (postprandial), but these then rapidly return back to normal.  The reason for this happening is you eat food, it reaches the stomach, digestion takes place during digestion the stomach breakes down fats, carbohydrates, and sugars from compound sugars to simple sugars (fructose and glucose).  Than the sugars transfer from the stomach into the bloodstream causing an increase in sugar levels.  Now, your body uses the sugar it needs at that time throughout the entire body for energy and if still extra sugar left in the bloodstream that isn’t needed at that time to be utilized it now needs to go somewhere out of the bloodstream to allow the glucose blood level to get back between 60-110mg/dl.  That extra glucose first gets stored up in the liver 60-80%. How this happens is the extra glucose in the blood stream not needed now fills up the liver (like filling up your gas tank) but limits the amount it can take. When the glucose goes in the liver it goes from active sugar to inactive by getting converted from glucose to glycogen=inactive sugar now. Now when the liver can store no more then the extra glucose left in the bloodstream after all tissues utilized the digested sugar sent to the bloodstream after digestion and the next place for storage gets stored in our fat tissue=fat storage=weight increase. That is the logic behind eating small meals properly dispensed with protein/CHOs/sugars/fat every 6hrs. This limits the amount of food to digest down to prevent excess sugar in the bloodstream preventing hyperglycemia from occurring and most of your small meal if not all is utilized by our muscle tissues preventing both hyperglycemia and high fat distribution of the glucose to prevent weight increase, also.

Unfortunately this doesn’t take place with a diabetic since there is very little or no insulin being released by the pancreas and over time due to the high blood glucose blood levels (called hyperglycemia) problems arise in the body over years.   When diabetes occurs there is a resolution and you have the disease the rest of your life.  You need to control your glucose level through proper dieting for a diabetic with balancing exercise and rest. Exercise uses up your glucose also in the body. Increase activity the body needs energy the gas for the body is glucose, like gas in our auto vehicles in the tank.

TWO TYPES OF Diabetes Mellitus:

1.)Diabetes I

 2.) Diabetes ll

We have risk factors that can cause disease/illness; there are unmodified and modified risk factors.

With unmodified risk factors we have no control in them, which are 4 and these are:

1-Heredity 2-Sex 3-Age 4-Race.

Now modified risk factors which are factors we can control.  They are

1.)Weight 2.)Diet 3.)Health Habits (which play a big role in why many people get diabetes II)  5.)Physical Inactivity 6.)Hyperlipidemia and Hypertension

Stayed tune for part III tomorrow on more knowledge of this disease.

“The American Cancer Society’s estimates for pancreatic cancer in the United States for 2023 are:

• About 64,050 people (33,130 men and 30,920 women) will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• About 50,550 people (26,620 men and 23,930 women) will die of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer accounts for about 3% of all cancers in the US and about 7% of all cancer deaths.

It is slightly more common in men than in women.”

American Cancer Society

(https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/pancreatic-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html)

Pancreatic cancer is one of the few types of cancer that haven’t improved in terms of survival rates over the years, according to the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. In fact, the foundation said the mortality rate is 93-percent within 5-years of diagnosis. And 71-percent will die in first year.  Usually people diagnosed with this disease are told they have 6 months to 1 year survival rate.  There are the few for the many that live longer but know this the major depending factor is also the stage level of cancer your in (I, II, III & IV).  The higher the worse the metastasis.

These stats point to why it’s important to raise awareness about this killer cancer, and to outline some facts and figures. In honor of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month in November, here are six things to know, thanks to Jeff Hayward on November 1 informed the world of this information on his blog with facts…

1. Their are Risk Factors

The American Cancer Society says that the average lifetime risk of developing cancer of the pancreas in both men and women is 1 in 65. However, there are certain factors that might make you more likely to face the disease.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America notes that these risk factors include age (most pancreatic cancers form at age-55 or older), gender (males are slightly more likely to develop it), obesity, diabetes, smoking, and more.

2. Heredity

Cancer Treatment Centers of America also notes that about 10-percent of pancreatic cancer cases are thought to be genetic, or passed down from a parent.

These genetic mutations include hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome (BRCA2), familial melanoma (p16), familial pancreatitis (PRSS1), and neurofibromatosis type-1 (NF1), adds the source. Other “inherited syndromes” can raise risks including Lynch syndrome (hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer), Peutz-Jeghers Syndrome, and Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome.

3. There Were 50,000 Cases 2016 and NOW

The American Cancer Society estimates there were 53,070 new diagnoses of pancreatic cancer this year in the U.S., and sadly it adds that it expected more than 41,000 of those patients to die from it.

Of those numbers, there were an estimated 27,670 men diagnosed in 2016, compared to an estimated 25,400 diagnoses for women. The death rates are proportionate for both, according to additional statistics from the cancer society.

The American Cancer Society’s estimates for pancreatic cancer in the United States for 2023 are:

• About 64,050 people (33,130 men and 30,920 women) will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• About 50,550 people (26,620 men and 23,930 women) will die of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer accounts for about 3% of all cancers in the US and about 7% of all cancer deaths.

It is slightly more common in men than in women.

4. One of Most Prevalent Cancers in the World

The World Cancer Research Fund International notes that pancreatic cancer shares 10th-place in global prevalence with kidney cancer. Worldwide, there were 338,000 cases of pancreatic cancers diagnosed in 2012 alone, notes the source.

Looking at a breakdown of the disease’s age-standardized rates by country, the U.S. comes in 20th at 7.5-cases per 100,000. The top two countries in the world for cancer of the pancreas are Czech Republic (9.7-per 100,000) and Slovakia (9.4-per 100,000).

5. It Often Causes Symptoms When it’s Too Late

Scientific American talks about why this type of cancer is so deadly in a 2011 article making reference to Apple founder Steve Jobs, who died from the cancer.

It notes that patients sometimes don’t seek treatment right away, because symptoms including weight loss, jaundice and abdominal pain don’t begin until the later stages. “They usually start after the tumor is a significant size. By then, chances are, it has metastasized (that is, spread to other parts of the body),” explains the article.

6. There’s More than One Type

The American Cancer Society explains the overwhelmingly common form of this cancer is pancreatic adenocarcinoma, which makes up 95-percent of all cases. These begin in the ducts of the pancreas and sometimes develop from the cells that form pancreatic enzymes, according to the source.

The “other” type of cancer of the pancreas is pancreatic endocrine tumors, otherwise known as neuroendocrine tumors, explains the cancer society. These tumors can be cancerous or benign, and are subdivided into other categories including “functioning NETs” (including gastrinomas, insulinomas and glucagonomas), and “non-functioning NETs” which are actually more likely to cause cancer because they can grow larger before they’re discovered.

Know how it works you have a pancreas medically noted in Anatomy and Physiology as having a head, neck, body and tail.  The location of the cancer can play a major role especially if diagnosed earlier, depending on the location for some.

The head is the widest part of the pancreas. The head of the pancreas is found in the right side of abdomen, nestled in the curve of the duodenum body and tail.  Worse place for pancreas since this allows metastasis faster than other areas of the pancreas.  The head of the pancreas is connected to other body organs and near lymph nodes making it the ideal place for metastasis (spreading) to occur.   Know this in some cases caught early can make a major change in a longer life for some.

The neck is the thin section of the gland between the head and the body of the pancreas.

The body is the middle part of the pancreas between the neck and the tail. The superior mesenteric artery and vein run behind this part of the pancreas.  This is not connected like the head and if caught early results can be better.

The tail is the thin tip of the pancreas in the left side of the abdomen, in close proximity with the spleen. This is the end of the pancreas connected to nothing, no ducts or other tissues or other body glands of the body that put it near by lymph nodes or connected to and best place for area of the cancer especially if it is only in the tail, in most cases, since less chance of spreading the cancer.  Also if only in the tail of pancreas, surgery will entail removal of that part of the organ with chemo a few months and resolved in most cases.  Just follow up visits to your chemo doctor for however long the M.D. directs you.

“-Your left lung is smaller than your right lung, to accommodate for your heart.
-70% of waste is eliminated through your lungs just by breathing2.
-Can you live without one lung? Yes you can, it limits your physical ability but doesn’t stop you from living a relatively normal life. Many people around the world live with just one lung.
-No matter how hard we exhale, our lungs will always retain 1 litre of air in the airways. This makes the lungs only human organs that can float on water.
-Oxygen only plays a small part in our breathing. The air we breathe contains 21% oxygen, but our bodies only use 5%, the rest is exhaled.
-Children and women are faster breathers than men because their breathing rate is higher.
-Humans exhale up to 17.5 millilitres of water per hour.”

Lung Foundation Australia (https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/how-your-lungs-work/)

You may be surprised to learn that the most deadly cancer among both men and women in the United States isn’t breast cancer: It’s lung cancer.

Although the rate of new lung cancer cases has dropped in recent years along with the smoking rate, lung cancer still accounts for more deaths than any other cancer in both men and women, according to the American Cancer Society.

So even though you’ll probably never see professional athletes sporting pearl-colored gloves and shoes (pearl is the color of the lung cancer ribbon) to raise awareness, it’s important to learn about the disease: who is at risk — not just people who smoke tobacco — how it’s treated and why early detection is the best defense.

Here, Mary Jo Fidler, MD, a medical oncologist at Rush University Medical Center, discusses five things everyone should know about lung cancer.

1. It’s often caused by a combination of factors.

“It’s natural to associate lung cancer with cigarette smoking,” Fidler says. “Although it’s true that smoking is responsible for 80 percent of all lung cancer cases, lung cancer among people who have never smoked is the sixth leading cause of cancer death worldwide.”

These are some of the leading causes of lung cancer among nonsmokers:

• Exposure to radon gas released from soil and building materials
• Exposure to asbestos, diesel exhaust and/or industrial chemicals
• Exposure to secondhand smoke (the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says secondhand smoke increases a nonsmoker’s lung cancer risk by as much as 20 to 30 percent)
• Air pollution

And while any of these factors can cause lung cancer on its own, the disease is often the result of interacting factors.

For instance, according to the National Institutes of Health, there is a greater risk for lung cancer when smokers are also exposed to radon gas. And research studies have shown that the combination of smoking and asbestos exposure greatly increases a person’s risk of developing lung cancer vs. both nonsmoking asbestos workers and smokers who are not exposed to asbestos.

Occupational exposures — including asbestos, uranium and coke (a type of fuel used in smelters, blast furnaces and foundries) — can also increase a person’s risk of dying from their lung cancer, according to another study.

2. Genes may play a role in lung cancer risk.

Scientists have discovered that another culprit may be responsible for some nonsmokers getting lung cancer: genetics.

A study published in the journal Nature Genetics identified three genetic variations — two on chromosome 6 and one on chromosome 10 — that are associated with increased lung cancer risk in Asian women who have never smoked.

Findings have shown that the risk of lung cancer among people who never smoked, especially Asian women, may be associated with specific genetic characteristics that distinguish it from lung cancer in smokers.

Another study, published in Cancer, found that a variant in the NFKB1 gene was associated with a 21 to 44 percent reduced risk of lung cancer. Because a protein produced in part of the NFKB1 gene is known to play a significant role in inflammation and immunity by regulating gene expression, cell death and cell production, the study suggests that inflammation and immune response may be associated with lung cancer risk.

Further research is needed, however, to determine whether there’s a cause and effect relationship between this variant in the NFKB1 gene and lung cancer. Future studies may also shed more light on the exact role inflammation plays in lung cancer risk.

3. If you’re at high risk, CT scans are an effective screening tool.

As with other cancers, the key to surviving lung cancer is catching it in the earliest stages, when it’s most treatable.

The five-year survival rate for people whose cancers are diagnosed when they’re still localized — meaning they haven’t yet spread to the lymph node drainage system or other areas of the body — can be as high as 80 to 90 percent; the survival rate plummets to 2 percent if the diagnosis happens after the cancer has spread to other body parts.

Unfortunately, because symptoms (including persistent cough or coughing up blood, unexplained weight loss, persistent chest pain and shortness of breath) don’t usually appear until the later stages, lung cancer is tough to diagnose early.

Low-dose spiral computed tomography (CT) has proven to reduce lung cancer deaths in patients at high risk for lung cancer. In fact, the National Lung Screening Trial found a 20 percent reduction in deaths from lung cancer among current or former heavy smokers who were screened with low-dose spiral CT (versus those screened by chest X-ray).

However, because the scans can also yield false positive results — by mistaking scar tissue or benign lumps for cancer — they’re recommended only for people at high-risk, for whom the benefits of early detection outweigh the risks of potential false positives and repeated exposure from the scans.

Lung cancer screening is recommended for people who meet these criteria:

• Are between the ages of 55 and 77 (for Medicare coverage) and 55 and 80 (for commercial insurance coverage)
• Have at least a 30 pack-year smoking history (an average of one pack a day for 30 or more years)
• Are in good health and have no signs of lung cancer (weight loss or coughing up blood)
• Have not had a chest CT in the past year.

“Talk to your doctor if you’re in this high-risk group,” says Fidler. “The best evidence we have available tells us that while CT scanning isn’t right for everyone, for those at high risk it does prevent lung cancer deaths by enabling earlier diagnoses.”

We have had a historically huge amount of FDA approvals in a relatively short amount of time for lung cancer therapies, which is good reason for optimism.

4. Some tumors can be removed minimally invasively.

Tumors that are caught in the early stages can often be surgically removed, giving patients a good chance of being cancer-free.

The standard procedure to remove the lobe of the lung in which the tumor is located, known as a lobectomy, typically requires a six-inch incision in the chest through which the ribsare spread apart.

But at a handful of medical centers, including Rush, roughly 80 percent of lobectomies can be done using a minimally invasive approach.

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) lobectomies are performed through small incisions (and without spreading the rib cage) using a tiny video camera and specialized surgical instruments. There are many benefits to a VATS lobectomy vs. open surgery — including less pain and fewer complications after surgery, less time in the hospital and a speedier recovery — and the results are comparable, making it a good option for many tumors.

5. Newer treatments pack a targeted punch.

Research has yielded a wealth of information about how lung cancer cells change and grow, enabling scientists to develop drugs to specifically address those changes.

These “targeted” drug therapies, used alone or in combination with chemotherapy, are typically less toxic and have fewer side effects than chemotherapy because they zero in on specific genes or proteins more often found in cancer cells then in healthy tissue.

These are some of the targeted therapies currently available for lung cancer

• Monoclonal antibodies (bevacizumab, ramucirumab)
• EGFR inhibitors (erlotinib, afatinib, gefitinib)
  • Osimertinib, an EGFR inhibitor that also targets cells with the T790M mutation
  • Necitumumab, an EGRF inhibitor for squamous cell non-small cell lung cancer
• Drugs that target the ALK gene (crizotinib, ceritinib, alectinib)