Negative health effects from chewing betel nuts can be genetically passed by parents to their children, and people should stop eating betel nuts to warm up during cold days, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said.
A man surnamed Chang (張), who has been a truck driver for more than 20 years, often chewed betel nuts to refresh his spirits when driving at night or to keep himself warm on cold winter days, and said that he could undertake more trips with the help of betel nuts, the agency said.
Even though his wife often asked him not to chew betel nuts due to concerns over his health, Chang refused to stop and even continued chewing after he discovered white spots in his mouth, but he finally quit last month after being diagnosed with oral cancer.
“Chewing betel nuts is a bad method for refreshing the spirit or keeping oneself warm,” HPA Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said, adding that there are many better ways to do that.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized betel nut as a known human carcinogen in 2003, the HPA said, adding that a study showed that a person who chews 10 or more betel nuts a day for more than 10 years remains at higher risk of developing oral cancer even 10 years after quitting.
Betel nuts contain arecoline, which affects the chewer’s central and autonomic nervous systems, and which is addictive, it said, adding the nitrosamines contained in the nuts can also trigger mutations in DNA and affect the chewer’s offspring.
Studies have also shown that children of men who chew betel nuts and suffer from metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those whose fathers do not chew betel nuts, it added.
The agency said that people who chew betel nuts should make use of the government’s free oral cancer screening test — which is available once every two years to chewers (or those who have quit) over the age of 30 and Aborigines over the age of 18 — because more than 5,000 people are diagnosed with oral cancer every year in the nation.
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