Aunt Liu is 48 years old. She is an accountant in the company. She lives very regularly and often goes out for square dancing. But some time ago, she had been coughing for three months and it didn’t heal. She was also accompanied by chest tightness and asthma, so she went to the hospital for treatment. On examination, she was found to have an abnormal mass in her right upper lung, which was diagnosed as stage III lung adenocarcinoma.
Coincidentally, 26-year-old Ms. Zhu also started with a cough. At first she thought it was a small cold, but she went to the clinic to get some medicine, but her cough did not improve. Finally, I went to a large hospital for a detailed examination, only to find out that it was advanced lung cancer.
In life, if you hear that someone has lung cancer, people will subconsciously associate it with “smoking.” But in recent years, more and more female patients are diagnosed with lung cancer. They have no family history, never smoke, pay attention to maintenance, and even rarely cook.
This is indeed unbelievable, but more cases and data show that the claws of lung cancer have passed over “male smokers” and quietly extended to “non-smoking women”.
In 15 years, the incidence of lung cancer in Chinese women doubled
Lung cancer is the well-deserved “number one killer” of all malignant tumors.
In 2014, there were 782,000 new cases of lung cancer in my country and 626,000 deaths in the same year. In general, both the incidence and mortality of lung cancer are about twice as high in men as in women. This is related to the higher smoking rate among men in my country (52.1%).
However, between 2000 and 2014, the incidence of lung cancer among Chinese women nearly doubled from 27.77/100,000 to 51.31/100,000. The number of smoking women in my country has been reduced to 2.7%, and the number of women who have never smoked is 25 times that of women who smoke.
A similar situation exists not only in my country, but also in developed countries such as East Asia, Europe and the United States. In the United States, the incidence of lung cancer in women under the age of 50 has begun to exceed that of young men, which may be related to the increase in smoking among young women in the United States.
However, the smoking rate of Chinese women has been decreasing. Why is the incidence of lung cancer still unavoidable?
At the end of the last century, the leading British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a retrospective analysis of the causes of death among millions of people in China, which found that 82% of the people who died of lung cancer in my country were males. All are smokers. But in women it was the exact opposite – 61% of the female deceased did not smoke! In rural areas where there are fewer smoking women, nearly 80 percent of non-smoking women die from lung cancer.
This shows that in addition to smoking, there are other factors that have a greater impact on Chinese women.
China’s second-hand smoke problem is the most serious. How deeply does it affect women’s lung cancer?
China is the country with the most serious second-hand smoke problem in the world. 316 million people smoke, 740 million non-smokers also inhale second-hand smoke, and 100,000 people die each year due to second-hand smoke. people. Japanese studies have also shown that among non-smokers, people who inhale secondhand smoke at home in adulthood have 1.3 times the risk of developing lung cancer than those who do not smoke secondhand smoke.
Therefore, secondhand smoke is indeed one of the killers of lung cancer in non-smokers.
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However, secondhand smoke does not contribute significantly to lung cancer in women. The study found that only 11% of non-smoking women with lung cancer in my country were clearly related to secondhand smoke in their husbands and workplaces. In the remaining 89%, there are other risk factors lurking.
At this time, many people must be eager to answer: Is it kitchen fumes?
Coal combustion is a class 1 carcinogen and is more harmful to women than oil fumes
In recent years, with the publicity of the media, the harm of kitchen fumes has become a household name. But how closely it is related to female lung cancer remains a question mark.
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Most studies have found that various high-temperature cooking methods (frying, frying, stir-frying) commonly used in Chinese food increase the risk of lung cancer in women who have never smoked. For example, among non-smoking women in Shanghai, women who fry more than once a week, stir-fry vegetables more than 7 times a week, and have heavy cooking fumes have more than double the risk of developing lung cancer than other women.
A study of Chinese women in Singapore came to a different conclusion: smoking women more than double the risk of lung cancer if they stir-fry vegetables every day (if they stir-fry meat or use unsaturated oils every day, the risk increased by a factor of 4); the risk of lung cancer in non-smoking women was not associated with cooking.
In light of these results, cooking fumes have beenThe World Health Organization classifies it as a “category 2A” carcinogen, which means that it is likely to cause cancer, but there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. The firewood smoke used to burn firewood for cooking in rural areas also belongs to category 2A.
Xuanwei, Yunnan is rich in coal, and the female lung cancer mortality rate here is the highest in the country!
In fact, more dangerous indoor pollutants than oil fumes are soot from burning coal, which is a Class 1 carcinogen with sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity to humans.
Source: pexels.com
Xuanwei County, Yunnan Province, which is rich in coal resources, is an example. Here, the smoking rate of men is 90%, and the smoking rate of women is only 1%. However, the local female lung cancer mortality rate is among the highest in the country.
Survey shows that 73% of Xuanwei people use bituminous coal as fuel. Regardless of whether they are male or female, whether they smoke, or whether they cook, the mortality rate from lung cancer is as high as 500/100,000. In the face of high concentrations of air carcinogens, even the effects of smoking appear negligible. Among those who use anthracite, women are only 4.7/100,000 (none of them smoke). This means that 99% of women would have been free from lung cancer without the use of bituminous coal.
Think about it, the daily living conditions of women in Xuanwei are probably like this: the quality of exhaust smoke in the kitchen is poor, cooking with coal for a long time, and inhaling second-hand smoke from her husband… …Can the incidence of lung cancer be high?
Nowadays, with the improvement of living standards, it is rare for every household to use honeycomb and briquettes. However, in the rural areas of northern and western my country, coal is still the main heating method in winter, and many rural elderly women have respiratory problems.
So, good ventilation, use of clean fuels and range hoods, and minimal frying when cooking can really help a lot of people, especially It is women who stay away from lung cancer.
But in addition to living habits, there are two “killers” lurking in the air we breathe all the time.
Be careful about air pollution and radon, and exercise as little as possible on hazy days!
Recently, severe pollution has occurred again in northern my country, which was dubbed the 25th solar term by netizens – “Li Haze”.
In 2013, the World Health Organization classified “outdoor air pollution” as a Category 1 carcinogen, the same level as smoking and soot. In 2016, 252,000 people died from lung cancer worldwide due to air pollution. In 2010 alone, 140,000 lung cancers died of air pollution in my country, accounting for more than half of the world.
Every 10 μg/m increase in PM 2.5 concentrations increases the risk of lung cancer by 37% in non-smoking women. The increased proportion of lung adenocarcinomas has also been shown to be related to air pollution, as small particles of PM 2.5 are more likely to penetrate deep into the alveoli.
A new Canadian study found that lifetime PM 2.5 exposures were significantly higher in non-smoking women with lung cancer than in women who smoked. If the air quality in childhood is poor, moving to a place with better air as an adult will not eliminate the previous accumulated risk.
Wearing a special anti-haze mask on hazy days and minimizing going out and exercising outdoors is responsible for your lungs.
In addition to the visible smog, there is an invisible invisible killer around us – radon.
Radon is a radioactive inert gas that exists in the natural environment and is also a Class 1 carcinogen. It is colorless and odorless and is originally underground, but can enter the air through cracks in foundations, pipes or wires.
Source: google.com
Outdoors, radon concentrations are almost negligible; indoors, radon concentrations are often associated with proximity to the ground. For example, in the United States, because the building is close to the ground, the radon content in the home is often not low, especially in the basement. As a result, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, after smoking.
In my country, radon levels on the first floor of single-storey or multi-storey dwellings tend to be higher. For every 100 Bq/m increase in radon concentration, the risk of lung cancer increases by 32% after 30 years of living. , women and men are at the same risk. Even in the natural high radon area, the soil radon only slightly affects the floors below the third floor, and the radon content in the daily living room is not high. Since most of our residents live in high-rise buildings and the first floor is mostly an overhead floor, the impact of radon gas on non-smoking lung cancer is not so great.
Also, while granite and concrete also contain radon, in most cases they emit very low levels of radon. Don’t worry too much. If you are really worried, you can ask a professional organization for testing (my country’s regulations are no more than 400 Bq/m).
Women’s lung cancer is ‘softer’ than men, early screening is key
Women’s lung cancer is not as bad as it is fortunate, because it is not as dangerous as male lung cancer.
In all stages of lung cancer, regardless of clinical stage, histological type, and smoking status, female patients are better than males, and the survival rate is significantly higher than that of males. Especially in female lung adenocarcinoma, most of them have gene mutations such as EGFR, ALK, HER2, etc., and targeted drugs against these mutations are more suitable. Squamous cell carcinomas caused by smoking in men lack these mutations, making targeted therapy difficult.
Finally, I would like to tell you that although the incidence of lung cancer in non-smoking women is on the rise, tobacco is still the number one killer of lung cancer in my country. Tobacco and other factors “gang crimes”, the risk of lung cancer will only increase, and the anti-smoking action is still imminent.
In addition to staying away from high-risk factors such as second-hand smoke, coal burning, oil fumes, and air pollution, the most important thing for non-smoking women is early screening.
Although many people participate in the annual physical examination, the package generally only contains chest X-rays, which is basically useless for early lung cancer screening. If the tumor is large enough to be visible on X-rays, it is too late.
To truly detect lung cancer early, low-dose helical CT is the only way. It is recommended that high-risk groups over the age of 50 (smokers, passive smoking, or family history of lung cancer, etc.) do it once a year. The cost is high, but one day you may thank yourself for doing this check.
Of course, if you are not a high-risk group, but you are over 45 years old, live in a place with severe air pollution, and worry about the risk of lung cancer, you can also consider doing a low-dose spiral CT. Regular screening as recommended by your doctor.
I hope every Chinese woman can maintain a healthy body and breathe freely in clean air.
For more lung cancer knowledge, please pay attention to the public account: Tencent Medical Code Cancer Chapter