 Hey listeners, we're here today with Dr. Jawad Lateef, a thoracic surgeon with Hackad-Sack Meridian's Advanced Lung and Airways Center with locations at Bayshore, Oldbridge, Raritan Bay, and JFK University Medical Center to talk about our lungs. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Lateef. Thank you, Sean, for having me. So as a thoracic surgeon, you must hear a lot of misconceptions about lung cancer. Can you share some of those with us? Absolutely, Sean. So this is a very important question to address. A lot of people believe that lung cancer is only a smoker's disease whereas in fact up to 20% of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in non-smokers. The other things that people think are that if they have been smoking for most of their life that there is nothing they can do to get healthier or improve their lung health. And that's also a common misconception because once someone stops smoking their lungs start to heal quite rapidly in the next three days in fact. And the third thing I want to point out is that for those who have been smoking or have significant previous smoking history, there's a misconception that unless they have any symptoms they don't see a doctor whereas you know we now know that lung cancer screening can provide valuable information in preventing morbidity from lung cancer by catching it early. So Dr, let me ask you then when we're talking about this topic, how would you advise patients to improve their overall lung health? So I would say first of all what I tell my patients is I understand that quitting smoking altogether for those who are active smokers is not always possible or immediately achievable but I do encourage them to cut down smoking as much as they can and that in studies have shown to improve patients' lung health in addition to you know being involved with an exercise program on a routine basis as well as participating in the lung cancer screening program. To take a lung cancer health risk assessment online visit hackensacmeridianhealth.org slash Lung Aware. We want to thank Dr Lateef for joining us today. Dr, thanks so much for all this great information. It's a pleasure Sean. Thank you very much.