Vegetables and chicken are about all that Robbin Cobb and her husband, William, have eaten since he was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago.

Robbin Cobb, 50, a certified Master Gardener, realizes not everyone knows about the importance of eating fresh fruit and veggies — rich in cancer-fighting antioxidants and other nutrients. So on Thursday, she lent her green thumb to a new cancer-prevention initiative of the Little Red Door Cancer Agency: a small community garden.

The diabetes drug metformin helped prevent tumors in mice that were exposed to a cancer-causing agent found in tobacco, said researchers at the AACR annual meeting. Compared with untreated mice, those that received the drug had a 53 percent reduction in lung tumor burden after exposure to the carcinogen, which is called nicotine-derived nitrosamine. The animals were treated with an oral form of metformin for 13 weeks at drug levels that would be achievable in humans, the researchers said.

“Metformin is a very interesting drug for cancer prevention,” said lead researcher Dr. Phillip A. Dennis of NCI’s Center for Cancer Research, who presented the results. “We prevented over half of the lung tumors that would have occurred from exposure to the main carcinogen in tobacco, and that’s a real and important reduction.” Dr. Dennis’ group is planning a clinical trial to test the FDA-approved drug in people at highest risk of developing lung cancer, he said.

Imagine this kind of warning on a cigarette package: Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risk to your health, particularly if your DNA is mutated at the 15q24 locus. Would you get tested for this mutation?

Right now, there is no such test. But someday, there might be.

Years of study and a mountain of evidence point to tobacco smoking as the single most important risk factor for lung cancer. Nonsmokers (people who have smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes over the course of their lives) have less than a 1% chance of ever developing lung cancer…

New research in mice suggests that metformin, a drug widely used to treat type 2 diabetes, may guard against lung cancer.

The drug’s prospects are not yet confirmed because researchers still need to test it in people. But, in mice, “this well-tolerated, FDA-approved diabetes drug was able to prevent tobacco carcinogen-induced lung tumors,” Dr. Phillip A. Dennis, senior investigator in the medical oncology branch of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said in a news release from the American Association for Cancer Research.

As a mother, daughter, and friend, I have spent my fair share of time in emergency rooms. It can be grueling– even when the reason for the visit is fairly trivial. A broken collar bone, a hand-full of stitches, or a tummy ache from eating too many gummy bears.

But as a caregiver for someone with end-stage cancer, those minutes can feel like hours, and hours like millennia. I can’t begin to imagine how uncomfortable those same moments feel for the one who is actually struggling with the final stages of cancer.

Thinking those same thoughts – that ER visits can be “disruptive, distressing, and exhausting” – and understanding that roughly 40% of people visit the ER in the final 2 weeks of life, researchers in Canada decided to look at the reasons why those visits happen. Could some of these reasons be avoidable?

Reviewing the results of a new study just might turn me into a turophile. A turophile – for those who don’t get their kicks from reading dictionaries for fun – is someone who loves cheese.

Researchers in Europe looked at over 24,000 people, to see if their dietary intake of vitamin K might have an impact on their risk for cancer. There are two primary forms of vitamin K. Vitamin K1 – phylloquinones – are found in green leafy vegetables among other sources. Vitamin K2 – menaquinones – are found in our diet primarily in cheeses. In this study, menaquinones, but not phylloquinones, were associated with a lower risk of developing lung cancer.

People with higher dietary intake of vitamin K are less likely to develop or die of cancer, particularly lung or prostate cancers.

Vitamin K exists in two natural forms: vitamin K1, or phylloquinone, found largely in green leafy vegetables, as well as some vegetable oils, such as canola and soybean oils; and vitamin K2, or menaquinone, for which meat and cheese are the primary dietary sources.

People with a high intake of vitamin K from food may be less likely to develop or die from cancer, especially prostate or lung cancer.

Vitamin K can be found in green leafy vegetables as well as in some vegetable oils, meat and cheese.

Researchers in Germany found that about one quarter of those people with the highest intakes of vitamin K were 28 percent less likely to die from cancer than those who ate less vitamin K-rich food.

Radon, a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas present in residential buildings, has been found to contribute to the deaths of patients suffering from lung cancer.

Klaus Schmid of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and his co-authors say that about 1900 deaths from lung cancer per year in Germany are due to radon within residential buildings.

The authors base their assessment on the results of relevant studies, the recently published S1 guideline of the German Society for Occupational and Environmental Medicine and a current publication from the German Commission on Radiological Protection.

Although you have been diagnosed with lung cancer anyway, you should eat more vegetables and fruits.

It is time that food will not only help you stop the cancer, but also to actively treat. Practitioners of alternative medicine have advocated for a long time vegetarian or macrobiotic diet for people with cancer including lung.

Now, traditional medicine is receiving increasing evidence that fruits and vegetables may be a good option for patients with lung cancer. Recent research shows that the substances contained in foods as beta carotene, can attack and destroy tumor cells and slow the growth and spread of tumors.

In a recent report, the Center for Research on Cancer, University of Hawaii in Honolulu, said the powers of plants chemotherapy slowed the progression and virulence of the cancer, prolonging the life span.