How Dangerous is Smoking??

There are dietary food-processing links with smoking and lung cancer, still not appreciated after very many years.

© Rae West   written 21 Jan 2013

This is a link to a recording of a talk by David Horrobin, the founder of Efamol, which stands for 'Essential Fatty Acid Molecules'. Horrobin, who unfortunately is now dead, researched into human and animal nutrition, and especially the types of fat in diet and their possible health links. As outlined in the talk, one man who was very influential on Horrobin's thought was Hugh Sinclair, a nutritionist. In the 1940s it was believed that almost everything to be known about nutrition was already known, or soon would be. Sinclair had the distinction of having the longest-ever letter to the Lancet published (in 1956); it was a letter, not an article, because the editor felt it may too 'controversial' to be included as an article. The subject was food processing and its relation to health; Sinclair claimed that hydrogenating fats, which made them saturated with hydrogen and less prone to become rancid, had unappreciated health risks, including increased incidence of lung cancer. Horrobin's talk here deals with the question of eczema, which in some cases is (he says) treatable with essential fatty acids, the detailed metabolic pathway of which is known. Among other things, Horrobin states that the lung cancer rate in Japan is far lower than in the USA, which he attributes to a diet high in fatty fish. Horrobin also looks at a paper critical of Ancel Keys, the originator of most popular beliefs on cholesterol, heart disease, and fats. Click for Talk by David Horrobin at the Institute of Chemistry in 1995; the material has been known about for decades. This suggests it's highly likely that a more oily diet, of the correct type of unsaturated oil, protects against lung cancer and other diseases. To be continued... Very important note It's been known for years that male mammals need far more EFA than female. There was no known reason for this; probably nobody knows why even now. But EFAs, which ought to be regarded as vitamins, are marketed for women, when in fact men, especially smokers, are much more likely to be deficient in these oils.     Evening primrose seeds contain large amounts of one member of a metabolic pathway (starflowers were found later to contain even more); Horrobin went into business selling the oil, packaged in capsules to prevent oxidation. It's strange that tobacco companies seem to have made no attempt to investigate all this in view of the health dangers associated with smoking! Note added March 30 2014: there's a well-suppressed idea that diesel smoke, mostly from trucks, causes lung cancer. This is an aspect of the particulate hypothesis: small, often invisible, particles may penetrate to the lungs; the cleaning mechanisms, usually with gluey material exuded from cells and moved with cilia, not being well adapted to supersmall particles. Dr Kitty Little was one of many who believed this; here's a not-well-recorded informal talk of hers. The case seems to have been left unexamined; as with fluoride in drinking water, the real motive was hidden, and 'public health' propagandists took over. Note added August 5 2016: I may as well insert here a link to the piece on this site about salt in diet, since shortage of salt (common salt, sodium chloride, sea salt) both weakens stomach acid, and presumably therefore reduces body alkalinity when alkaline environments are known to prevent cancer thriving. Note added Nov 29 2021: I'm not aware of serious world surveys of smoking. Including for example hookahs in the east Med areas. However, I noticed a site 'Indian tobacco' from the USA on https://healthwyze.org/reports/313-smoking-to-cure-lung-infections-and-for-good-lung-health promoting lobelia inflata and claiming all the noise over lung cancer depended on additives and paper wrapping. I haven't even tried to check whether the European binomial classification of inflata is legitimately scientific. Anyway, it's interesting to compare the praise from 'Healthwyze' with the contempt from 'Wikipedia' here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobelia_inflata. Maybe home-grown lobelia inflata cigars will become popular. Click for Index to all my short general interest and speculative items, collected into one file Click for Home page of entire big-lies.org site HTML Rae West. Uploaded 2013-Jan-21 male deficit added 2013-Jan-27 -- though the material was collected around 1995.