nick said:I don't disagree with what you have written, but that's not the point. I'm sure that you understand
that smoking increases free radical damage in your body. And the scientists are saying that that
supressed the immune system, and over a long period of time increases your risk of cancer because
your body does not have the resources to prevent it. They supplied a mechanism for their claim - it
wasn't based on statistics, but what actually happens in the body. I'm just adding that excess free
radical activity is to be avoided, and there is a diet you can eat that will limit excess free
radical damage dramatically. It's a rather basic message, and all the evidence seems to support it.
But omega-3 acids is the key to dampen that suppresion of the immune system since what I tried to
tell you is that the oxidative stress from smoke trigger PGE2 production which mute down the immune
system (and is also what several cancer cells do, increase PGE2 production thousands fold if not
million fold (that is, increasing them from femtomol/picomol range into nanomol/micromol range, from
a source of arachidonic which is always in the potential of producing micromol concentration if PLA2
is fully activated. By substituting some of the AA in cell (which normally is around 60% of all 2-
position substituent in phospholipids inside the membrane, while far less on the outer side of the
outer membrane) with omega-3 acids, these will instead produce PGE3 which has far less immune system
quenching effects.
So, by decfreasing the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, you get a strong inhibition of the immune system
quench effect from free radicals. (There are also other mechanisms around).
Another target is to reduce the amount of active cyclooxygenases. That is done by eating small doses
of aspirine.
A third strategy is to increase the intake of trace elements involved in prevention against free
radical harms. That is, eating food rich in selenium, copper and manganese, plus zinc. That is,
eating more vegetables. Meat from animals fed refined food lacking trace elements and antioxidants
is of no good at all. But meat from grazing animals fed otherwise with foods gather over big areas,
like harvesting some food in forests, in fields far away etc. is a way to secure good compositions
in trace elements and natural antioxidants, eg. giving some oak leaves and bark will give the
animals good amounts of quercetin, an important antioxidant for blood capillar funtion. Other leaves
and bark will give them other antioxidants which in turn we may benefit. 100 years ago and earlier,
this was a natural component of animals diet, at least in Europe. Maybe that was a key to survival
and not dying of mutations, like familiar hypercholesterolemia, which is a very usual gene here in
Norway, which now kills many people, while their ancestors survived far longer while they had a diet
consisting of much cholesterollowering components like taurine from meat and possibly also lots of
antioxidants from the meat where the animals got them from the food they was given (but it was a
marginal diet which gave a very low growth rate to the animals which was not usable if producing
strictly for sale. But the diet today has gone to far in opposite direction in giving too high
growth rate (mostly due to the extremely low omega-3/omega-6 ration since arachidonate is a cell
growth enhancer because PGF2-alpha is an important signaler in growth cycle, and often the limiting
factor in cell growth regulation)
