Friday, February 11, 2011

Dr. Oz Show: Lung Cancer Is Deadly and Test Your Home for Radon TODAY

Today on the Dr. Oz Show, we learned about Lung Cancer and how Radon in your home is a leading cause of it in non-smokers.


Dr. Oz says that lung cancer kills more than breast, colon and pancreatic cancers combined. If you know the warning signs and catch it early, you can survive. Last year in the US, over 220,000 patients were diagnosed with lung cancer, and nearly 160,000 people died of it. Most cases are caused by smoking, but you don’t have to smoke to get lung cancer.

Dr. Oz’s guests today were Dr. Otis Brawley, the Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society and Regina Vidaver, the Executive Director of the National Lung Cancer Partnership.

The warning signs of lung cancer are first and foremost, a cough that doesn’t go away. After multiple rounds of antibiotics, if your cough has still not gone away, or if you’ve have a cough for more than a month, you need to see a doctor. If you’re coughing up blood, you need to see a doctor. And the last warning sign is pain in the chest, neck or shoulder.

Besides smoking, Vidaver says that ex-smokers are still at risk. Other risk factors are exposure to second-hand smoke, radon and then your genetics can predispose you to it as well. 20,000 people every year get diagnosed with lung cancer that never smoked.

The number one cancer risk in your home is radon. Rebecca Morley, the Executive Director of the National Center for Healthy Living says that when radon gets trapped in your home, it can become a problem as it is a Class-A carcinogen. One in 15 homes have radon in them! Everybody needs to get a test from the hardware store and check your home. The EPA acceptable Radon level is 4.0 pCi/L, but Morley said the World Health Organization set it at 2.7. If you have test results that are higher than acceptable levels, you need to have a company come in and do mitigation that removes the radon from your house and sends it out via a pipe in the roof.

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