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Tag: lung health

  • Wish kid flips over meeting Simone Biles – WTOP News

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    Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at birth, Haley says meeting Simone Biles gave her hope and inspiration to pursue her ultimate goal: competing in the Olympics and inspiring others.

    Haley Gibson of Frederick, Maryland, met her gymnastics hero, Simone Biles, through Make-A-Wish. (Courtesy Gibson family)

    Throughout December, WTOP is bringing you “Wish Wednesday,” where we spotlight what Make-A-Wish Mid-Atlantic does for families in D.C., Virginia and Maryland. If you would like to help make a wish kid’s dream come true, please visit the foundation’s website.

    Have you ever heard the old saying about never meeting your hero? A lot of people believe they will let you down.

    Someone who disagrees with that statement is an 11-year-old gymnast from Frederick, Maryland.

    During a Make-A-Wish visit at WTOP, Haley Gibson explained why meeting her hero, Simone Biles, caused her to flip out.

    “She did the opposite of disappointing me. She lightened me. She helped me through the struggles I was going through, and just made me feel so much better,” Haley said. “She was really sweet. She listened, she gave good answers. She was patient.”

    Haley, who started in gymnastics at the age of two, said Biles has always been her idol.

    “So when I got to meet her, I just happened to be going to a camp,” Haley said. “It was even more special.”

    Sitting and watching Haley be interviewed about that special day was her biggest fan and mom, Lisa Gibson.

    Along with Haley, her mother, father and her two sisters also met Biles.

    “She was so down to earth and so nice. I mean, you wouldn’t have even known that she was this big celebrity,” Lisa said. “You have been such an inspiration to her and to our family.”

    The meeting will be something Haley will never forget.

    “It was just so exciting, because I think my brain was just like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s really here,’” Haley said.

    Shortly after Haley was born, she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, as was one of her sisters.

    “Cystic fibrosis is a lung disease that can affect the breathing,” Haley said. “So you have to do treatments and take lots of medicine, and it’s very hard and sometimes scary.”

    Lisa said seeing the light in Haley’s eyes as her daughter and Biles spoke brought her the joy she needed.

    “She’s been through so much being a military family, you move a lot. Then you add on CF, and you just add on being in middle school — all these things, and she just takes it like a champ,” Haley’s mother said.

    As soon as Haley returned from her Wish, she asked her mom how she could help Make-A-Wish, since they had helped her.

    What will the future hold in store for the sixth grader?

    Don’t worry, she already has it planned out.

    “Go to the Olympics and be an inspiration for other people,” Haley said.

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    Jimmy Alexander

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  • Johnson declares Oct. 19 ‘Love Your Lungs Day’ as thousands of doctors gather for CHEST conference

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    CHICAGO (WLS) — Around 7,000 doctors from across the country are in Chicago this weekend, working to discuss ways to improve lung health.

    The 90th annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians is happening Sunday at McCormick Place. The conference is called CHEST 2025.

    ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch

    Mayor Brandon Johnson issued a proclamation on Sunday, declaring Oct. 19 as Love Your Lungs Day. The proclamation highlights the importance of lung health while sharing CHEST’s mission focusing on advocacy, health education and innovation.

    CHEST President Dr. John Howington spoke with ABC7 about the importance of this annual conference.

    “Well first, I recognize that Chicago has declared today Love Your Lungs Day to raise awareness about lung health. Lung cancer is a number one cancer killer in men and women and COPD is the number three cause of death in the U.S., so people need to be aware of our lung health and focus on that focus on taking care of your lungs, not smoking, avoiding pollution, exercising,” Howington said.

    In a statement, Johnson said, “By shining a spotlight on respiratory health, Chicago stands alongside CHEST and raising awareness, promoting equity and supporting healthcare providers and their patients.”

    Copyright © 2025 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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    Christian Piekos

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  • True Health Intiative: Scientific Consensus on a Healthy Diet  | NutritionFacts.org

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    The leading risk factor for death in the United States is the American diet.

    About a decade ago, the American Heart Association (AHA) expressed concern that its “2020 target of improving cardiovascular health by 20% by 2020 will not be reached if current trends continue.” By 2006, most people were already not smoking and had nearly achieved their goal for exercise. But when it came to healthy diet score, only about 1 percent got a 4 or 5 out of its diet quality score of 0 to 5, as you can see below and at 0:35 in my video, Friday Favorites: The Scientific Consensus on a Healthy Diet. And that’s with such “ideal” criteria as drinking less than four and a half cups of soda a week.

    In the last decade, the AHA saw a bump in the prevalence of the ideal healthy diet score to about 1 percent of Americans reaching those kinds of basic criteria, but, given its “aggressive” goal of reaching a “20% target” by 2020, it hoped to turn that 1 percent into about 1.2 percent. (Really, as you can see here and at 1:01 in my video.)

    So, how’d we do? According to the 2019 update, it seems we’ve slipped down to as low as one in a thousand, and American teens scored a big fat zero. No wonder, perhaps, that “for all mortality-based metrics, the US rank declined…to 27th or 28th among 34 OECD [industrialized] countries. Citizens living in countries with a substantially lower gross domestic product and health expenditure per capita…have lower mortality rates than those in the United States.” Slovenia, for example, beat the United States, ranking 24th in life expectancy. More recently, the United States’s life expectancy slipped further, down to 43rd in the world, although the United States spent the most ($3.0 trillion) on health care…”

    What is the leading risk factor for death in the United States? As seen below and at 2:04 in my video, it is the standard American diet. Those trillions in health care spending aren’t addressing the root cause of disease, disability, and death. 

    Here are some of the lung cancer death curves, below and at 2:08 in my video:

    It took decades to finally turn the corner, but it’s so nice to finally see those drops. When will we see the same with diet?

    “Approximately 80% of chronic disease and premature death could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active, and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern.” What exactly is meant by “healthy diet”? “Unfortunately, media messages surrounding nutrition are often inconsistent, confusing, and do not enable the public to make positive changes in health behaviors….Certainly, there is pressure within today’s competitive journalism market for sensationalism. There may even be a disincentive to present the facts in the context of the total body of information consumers need to act on dietary recommendations.” And there’s an incentive to sell more magazines and newspapers. The paper I’m quoting was written in 1997, before the lure of clickbait headlines. In fact, about three-quarters of a century ago, it was noted: “It is unfortunate that the subject of nutrition seems to have a special appeal to the credulous, the social zealot and, in the commercial field, the unscrupulous….The combination is one calculated to strike despair in the hearts of the sober, objective scientist.”

    Indeed, the most important health care problem we face may be “our poor lifestyle choices based on misinformation.” It is like the climate change deniers: “Analogous to outspoken cynics denying climate change and influencing public opinion, healthy lifestyle and dietary advice are overshadowed by critics, diet books, the food industry, and misguided information in the media.” Maybe we need an entity like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—but for nutrition.

    These days, “no single expert, regardless of academic stature or reputation, has the prominence to overcome the obstacles created by confusing media messages and deliver the fundamental principles of healthy living effectively to the public.”

    What if there were “a global coalition consisting of a variety of nutrition experts, who collectively represent the views held by the majority of scientists, physicians, and health practitioners” that could “serve as the guiding resource of sound nutrition information for improved health and prevention of disease”?

    Enter the True Health Initiative, which “was conceived for that very purpose.” A nonprofit coalition of hundreds of experts from dozens of countries has agreed to a consensus statement on the fundamentals of healthy living. See www.truehealthinitiative.org.

    Spoiler alert: The healthiest diet is one generally comprised mostly of minimally processed plants.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Cleaning Products, Air Fresheners, and Lung Function  | NutritionFacts.org

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    There is a reason the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prohibits not only smoking but also scented or fragranced products in its buildings.

    In a recent review entitled “Damaging Effects of Household Cleaning Products on the Lungs,” researchers noted: “Adverse respiratory effects of cleaning products were first observed in populations experiencing high levels of exposure at the workplace, such as cleaners and health-care workers, with a primary focus on asthma.” Occupational use of disinfectants has also been linked to a higher risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, such as emphysema.

    As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: The Effects of Cleaning Products and Air Fresheners on Lung Function, we now know that, in addition to workplace exposures, “exposure to household cleaning products has also emerged as a risk factor for respiratory disorders in childhood,” as well potentially being “an important risk factor for adult asthma.” Common household cleaning spray use accounts for as many as one in seven adult asthma cases. The thought is that inhaling chemical irritants may cause injury to the airways, leading to oxidative stress and inflammation. What can we do about it?

    Well, it may be limited to sprays. Researchers found that cleaning products that were not sprayed were not associated with asthma. It’s also possible that environmentally friendly cleaning products “may represent a safer alternative,” though they may still present some risk.

    Ideally, safer cleaning products should be available. Unfortunately, the research suggesting harm has “seldom been heeded by manufacturers, vendors, and commercial cleaning companies.” I wonder how much of that is because “most of the workers exposed to cleaning products are women”—both occupationally and, perhaps, domestically.

    One of the problems may be the fragrance chemicals. One in three Americans surveyed “reported health problems, such as migraine headaches and respiratory difficulties, when exposed to fragranced products.” And, for about half of them, the problems were so bad they actually lost work over it, either “workdays or a job due to fragranced product exposure in the workplace.”

    “Results from this study reveal that over one-third of Americans suffer adverse health effects, such as respiratory difficulties and migraine headaches, from exposure to fragranced products. Of those individuals, half reported that the effects can be disabling. Yet over 99% of Americans are exposed to fragranced products at least once a week, from their own or others’ use.”

    The effect on asthmatics may be even worse, affecting closer to two-thirds of Americans. One compound that may be of particular concern is called 1,4-dichlorobenzene, also known as para-dichlorobenzene, which is found in many air fresheners, toilet bowl deodorants, and mothballs. It breaks down in the body into a compound called 2,5-dichlorophenol, which we pee out, giving researchers a reliable measure of our dichlorobenzene exposure. Not only may it make respiratory problems worse for those already suffering from compromised airways, but exposure to dichlorobenzene “at [blood] levels found in the U.S. general population, may result in reduced pulmonary [lung] function” in people who start out with normal breathing. What’s worse, higher exposures “were associated with greater prevalence of CVD [cardiovascular disease] and all cancers combined,” another reason to avoid it. We’d better read labels, right?

    Surprisingly, “no law in the US requires the disclosure of all ingredients in fragranced consumer products.” In fact, for laundry supplies, cleaning products, and air fresheners, manufacturers “do not need to list the presence of a ‘fragrance’ on either the label or MSDS,” the material safety data sheet. We won’t know until we smell it.

    I support the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ban. Not only is “the use of tobacco products (including cigarettes, cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco, or other tobacco products)…prohibited at all times,” but “scented or fragranced products are prohibited at all times in all interior space owned, rented, or leased by CDC.” I wish rideshare services like Uber and Lyft would have a similar policy. I’d even be happy with just a fragrance-free option. About one in five of more than a thousand Americans surveyed said they “would enter a business but then leave as quickly as possible if they smelled air fresheners or some fragranced product,” so it’s in the best interest of businesses, too. “Over 50% of the population would prefer that workplaces, health care facilities and professionals, hotels, and airplanes were fragrance-free.”

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Is Our Life Expectancy Extended by Intermittent Fasting?  | NutritionFacts.org

    Is Our Life Expectancy Extended by Intermittent Fasting?  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Alternate-day modified fasting is put to the test for lifespan extension. 

    Is it true that alternate-day calorie restriction prolongs life? Doctors have anecdotally attributed improvements in a variety of disease states to alternate-day fasting, including asthma; seasonal allergies; autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis; infectious diseases, such as toenail fungus, periodontal disease, and viral upper respiratory tract infections; neurological conditions, such as Tourette’s syndrome and Meniere’s disease; atrial fibrillation; and menopause-related hot flashes. The actual effect on chronic disease, however, remains unclear, as I discuss in my video Does Intermittent Fasting Increase Human Life Expectancy?. 
     
    Alternate-day fasting has been put to the test for asthma in overweight adults, and researchers found that asthma-related symptoms and control significantly improved, as did the patients’ quality of life, including objective measurements of lung function and inflammation. As you can see in the graphs below and at 0:56 in my video, there were significant improvements in peak airflow, mood, and energy. Their weight also improved—about a 19-pound drop in eight weeks—so it’s hard to tease out the effects specific to the fasting beyond the benefits we might expect from weight loss by any means. 

    For the most remarkable study on alternate-day fasting, you have to go back more than a half-century. Though the 2017 cholesterol findings were the most concerning data I could find on alternate-day fasting, the most enticing was published in Spain in 1956. The title of the study translates as “The Hunger Diet on Alternate Days in the Nutrition of the Aged.” Inspired by the data being published on life extension with caloric restriction on lab rats, researchers split 120 residents of a nursing home in Madrid into two groups. Sixty residents continued to eat their regular diet, and the other half were put on an alternate-day modified fast. On the odd days of the month, they ate a regular 2,300-calorie diet; on the even days, they were given only a pound of fresh fruits and a liter of milk, estimated to add up to about 900 calories. This continued for three years. So, what happened? 
     
    As you can see below and at 2:16 in my video, throughout the study, 13 participants died in the control group, compared to only 6 in the intermittent fasting group, but those numbers were too small to be statistically significant. 

    What was highly significant, though, was the number of days spent hospitalized: Residents in the control group spent a total of 219 days in the infirmary, whereas the alternate-day fasting group only chalked up 123 days, as you can see below and at 2:38 in my video. 


    This is held up as solid evidence that alternate-day fasting may improve one’s healthspan and potentially even one’s lifespan, but a few caveats must be considered. It’s not clear how the residents were allocated to their respective groups. If, instead of being randomized, healthier individuals were inadvertently placed in the intermittent fasting group, that could skew the results in their favor. As well, it appears the director of the study was also in charge of medical decisions at the nursing home. In that role, he could have unconsciously been biased toward hospitalizing more folks in the control group. Given the progress that has been made in regulating human experimentation, it’s hard to imagine such a trial being run today, so we may never know if such impressive findings can be replicated. 

    Well, that was interesting! I had never even heard of that study until I started digging into the topic.  

    Check out my fasting series and popular videos on the subject here.  

    For more on longevity, see related videos below.



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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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