For many people, today could be the day the quit. Today marks the American Cancer Society’s 33rd Great American Smokeout, a day when smokers are encouraged to not smoke for at least one day in the hope that they can quit permanently. Many Americans are expected to observe the Smokeout by refusing to light up a cigarette. Smoking one pack a day, means you’re spending about $2,000 to $3,000 a year, according to one estimate. November is also Lung Cancer Awareness Month, a month dedicated to raising awareness about the most devastating side-effect of smoking: lung cancer. Lung cancer killed 160,390 people last year, an average of 439 people a day, according to the Lung Cancer Alliance. It is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, killing more people annually than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney and melanoma cancers combined.  So how do you fight the urge? Well for starters you can build a support system for yourself, health officials say. Or use a buddy system, so you have someone to call. Try to stay busy so you’re not thinking about your next drag.

Exercise can cut a woman’s breast cancer risk. Here’s yet another benefit of working out: for women, it reduces your breast cancer risk by 20 percent. Women who got regular exercise, according to a study of more than 32,000 postmenopausal women, cut their risk of breast cancer by 30 percent. “Possible mechanisms through which physical activity may protect against breast cancer that are independent of BMI [body mass index] include reduced exposure to growth factors, enhanced immune function, and decreased chronic inflammation, variables that are related both to greater physical activity and to lower breast cancer risk,” said the authors, who published their findings in the journal of Breast Cancer Research.  However, there was a caveat.  The benefits of exercise were whipped out of women who did not get enough sleep. In some cases, women’s breast cancer risk actually increased by 50 percent in women who got less than 7 hours of sleep a night, the authors said.  Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death and is the sixth most-common cause of death for women of all ages in the U.S. While African-American women do not get breast cancer at a greater rate than White women, when they do get it they die at higher rates than White women do, according to federal statistics.

Government doctors fight staph infection.

Just as NBA Star Grant Hill rallies others who have experience with the flesh-eating staph infection known as MRSA, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a campaign to make parents more aware of the dangerous and potentially deadly effects of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The government campaign hopes to get parents to identify, prevent and combat the infection. Often mistaken for a spider bite as the symptoms, MRSA also causes painful, red, swollen areas on skin that sometimes ooz puss, experts say. MRSA infection begins as a bump or infected area on the skin, is warm to touch and maybe accompanied by fever. It is contracted when someone touches an infected area or shares a personal item with someone who is already infected. Athletes are more prone to this infection, but it is also common at hospitals. To prevent the disease, the CDC advises frequent hand-washing, no sharing of personal items such as towels and to keep any wound or cut clean and bandaged. Early detection is always advisable as the infection at a later stage becomes difficult to treat. As part of the awareness campaign, the CDC hopes to develop Web sites, brochures, fact sheets, posters, radio and print public services, Web banners and mom-blogging sites. To find out more about Hill’s personal experience with the deadly staff infection and the Stop MRSA Now campaign go to BET.com/Body & Soul.  

Study: Fast-Food Ads Target Blacks.   A higher exposure to fast-food ads and marketing of other fatty foods is in part to blame for why overweight and obesity rates are such a bigger problem for African Americans (68.9 percent) than for Whites (59.5 percent), says the numbers crunched by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Read more at BET.com’s Body & Soul.
 

Blacks with lung disease have twice the cancer risk. Blacks with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – including chronic bronchitis and some types of serious chronic asthma – have twice the risk of developing lung cancer than Whites with the condition, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, Reuters reports. For the study, lead researcher Carol Etzel of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and colleagues developed a risk assessment model to help predict Blacks’ risk for lung cancer. Researchers analyzed data on 491 Blacks with lung cancer and 497 Blacks without the disease and compared those numbers against models that measured the disease in Whites. Researchers said the model will help doctors better predict lung cancer risk. The new model found that Black men with a history of chronic lung disease, often called COPD, had a more than a six-fold increased risk of developing lung cancer, which is about the same risk for those who smoke. According to Reuters, both Black and White smokers have a risk of lung cancer six times higher than that of non-smokers. Smoking is the leading cause of COPD, but pollution, and other environmental factors also play a role, Reuters reports. “What we hope is that a doctor can use these models to encourage their patients to take steps to prevent lung cancer,” Dr. Ezel says. “Even if they are never smokers, they can be at risk.”