Eating fruit can help adults who were exposed to second-hand smoke as children, a new study has claimed.
The research in Singapore on around 35,000 adult non-smokers revealed that those who lived with a smoker during childhood were more than twice as likely to suffer from chronic coughs as adults.
But people who ate even a small amount of fruit and soy fibre had less chronic cough as a result of tobacco smoke, it claimed.
The research team, made up of scientists from the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the University of Minnesota, and the National University of Singapore, said the research is the largest study to date on the effects of childhood exposure to environmental tobacco smoke on later respiratory disease, and the first to include data on dietary intake.
Earlier studies have linked fruit consumption to lower incidence of chronic respiratory symptoms. There is also evidence to show that dietary vitamins, like vitamin C, can protect children's respiratory health. However, the new study measured fibre intake later in life.
Those adults who ate more than 7.5 grams of fibre each day, the equivalent of about two apples, had fewer health effects associated with environmental tobacco smoke when young.
