The lungs repair the damage caused by cigarettes themselves
Your lungs have such an ‘amazing’ ability to repair the damage caused by smoking, but for that you have to quit smoking.
Changes in lung cells can lead to cancer. So far, scientists have been of the opinion that the harms of smoking cannot be cured even if you quit smoking.
However, a new study published in the scientific journal Nature has shown that damaged lung cells have the ability to repair damaged lungs if smoking is discontinued.
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Researchers have studied patients who continued to smoke at least one pack of cigarettes a day for 40 years.
Tobacco contains a number of elements that are thought to be responsible for changes in lung cells. Gradually, these changes move healthy cells to the position where they develop cancer.
Healthy lungs
In a smoker, many cells have undergone this change in the early stages of cancer. Cells were taken from the smoker’s lungs that had undergone about 10,000 genetic mutations due to tobacco use.
Dr Kate Gowers, a researcher at University College London in the UK, said: “These cells should be thought of as small time bombs waiting to take the next step towards cancer.
But there are also some cells in the lungs that are not affected by smoking.
He said it was unclear how he could keep himself safe while smoking.
However, when a person quits smoking, these healthy cells begin to grow in number and replace the infected cells in the lungs.
About 40% of the lung cells of people who quit smoking were similar to those of people who have never smoked.
Dr Peter Campbell of the Singer Institute in the UK said his team was not expecting such results.
“There are a number of healthy cells in the lungs that magically repair the lungs,” he said.
What is unusual is that in people who have quit smoking for 40 years, the healthy cells in their lungs replace the cells that are affected by smoking.
Encouragement to quit smoking
Researchers are still conducting further research to determine how much of the affected lung can be restored.
There are 47,000 cases of lung cancer in the UK each year. Three-quarters of these cases are attributed to smoking.
Scientists have previously reported that the risk of lung cancer decreases from the day a person quits smoking.
The reason for this is still thought to be that quitting smoking does not cause any further damage to the lungs.
“It’s encouraging that people who quit smoking today can benefit in two ways,” said Rachel O’Reilly, of Cancer Research UK. The first is to protect the lungs from further damage caused by tobacco and the second is to give your lungs a chance to repair the damage done so far.
