Cancer: What it is and how to avoid it
Cancer has grown increasingly prominent among western cultures whose population live their lives surrounded by a toxic soup that is a byproduct of their lifestyle. As incidents of smoking, pollution, poor diet and lack of activity take their toll slowly on the body, more of our internal systems to keep cancer at bay are damaged. It is estimated that 50% of all cancer incidences in women and 30% in men are directly associated with environmental factors.
What is Cancer?
Although cancer is nothing new, great advances in medical science have enabled us to live longer, healthier lives where middle age use to be in the mid twenties, it is routinely now in the mid 40s. Being able to cure many infectious diseases has only increased the amount of cancer in our society because its risk increases with age.
Trillions of cells in our bodies die and are replaced daily, when cells start to show abnormal characteristics and grow uncontrollably they form tumors which may or may not lead to cancer. Tumors grow in our bodies all the time but usually amount to nothing and dissolve back – but when they fail to go away, they are referred to as malignant, which is another way of saying they are cancerous. Sometimes they stay in place, other times parts of the cancer can travel in the bloodstream and invade other tissues – this is called metastasis. Usually when a cancer reaches its metastasis stage, it slowly takes over all our bodies resources, causing death by malnutrition.
Cancer Phases
The first phase of cancer is when nonspecific cells start to grow uncontrollably in the body, this can be caused by heredity, radiation or chemicals. The second phase is promotion phase which causes genetic changes in the cells – this can take many years if not decades- for instance smokers “promote” an environment for lung cancer by helping to increase the chance of a mutation in the cells that may lead to lung cancer. This can be affected by diet, lifestyle and heredity.
Diet related ways of reducing the risk of getting cancer
1) Diet high in fiber
Fiber works in so many ways in the body, it helps clean the body of bad chemicals by giving them a way to leave the body, it increases the volume of materials and makes those materials move quicker out of the body. A diet high in fiber usually also means a diet low in fat, which also helps increase the amount of bacteria in the intestines that are aerobic (need oxygen) relative to those that are anaerobic (don’t need oxygen). Put simply, if you eat something that has some carcinogens in it, fiber will help get it out of your body faster before it can do too much damage.
2) Diet low in fat
Studies have shown that diets high in fat are also high in carcinogens – agents that cause cancer. Incidences and mortality from cancer are shown to be very low in Asian cultures while very high in Western cultures – where meat is the main dish, not vegetables.
3) Diet low in pickled, smoked or salted foods
Although the reason isn’t precisely known, it is thought that these foods irritate the lining of the stomach and esophagus – which over an extended period of time may increase the risk of cancer – much in the same way smoking irritates the lungs but to a much smaller extent.
4) Diet high in vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium
Diets high in fat give a very good environment for the conversion of nitrates and nitrites from plant life, into nitrosamines which is a known carcinogen. The good new is that most plants that are high in nitrates or nitrites are also high in vitamin C, which helps inhibit this conversion but the bad news is that many modern food processing techniques for meats and vegetables usually removes this protective vitamin.
Vitamin E helps to protect cells from free radicals (oxidation) that may alter or damage their cell walls. It also helps protect polyunsaturated fats from oxidation. It has also been shown that diets high in selenium reduces the incidence of cancer.
5) Diet high in carotenoids (vitamin A) and Folic acid
Carotenoids work in two ways in the body, they help the body will cell differentiation and also act as an antioxidant. It also seems to have an antitumorigenic property as well – stopping the development and helping destroy tumors but this isn’t conclusive.
Folic acid – a vitamin B, is responsible for repairing damaged or weakened DNA, which is the route cause of cancer so it makes sense that a diet high in folic acid will play a role in reducing the risk of cancer.
Other ways of reducing the risk of getting cancer
1) Live a physically active lifestyle
Remember a few issues back how I wrote physical activity sends a signal to the body that there is lots of food around and this automaticallly revs up your body to fight disease and maintain itself at peak efficiency. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, the risk of diseases like cancer and many others increases dramatically.
2) Colonoscopy: Get one done regularly
I know the joys of a colonoscopy first hand but to be honest, one of the most prevalent yet easily detected/treated types of cancer is colon cancer. If you are over 40 years old, get yourself checked up every 5 years!
3) Lean Yourself Out
It is though that the extra fat carried by overweight people reduces circulation of hormones and circulation in the body. In addition, people who are overweight usually have a diet high in animal products and low in vegetables – this works together to increase the risk of prostate and breast cancer. The more obese you are, the higher the likelyhood of developing certain types of cancer.
The Bottom Line
The best way to fight cancer is not to get it in the first place, there is no 100% effective way to avoid cancer, but anything that reduces the risk should be adopted as part of any healthy lifestyle.
It seems I keep coming to the same themes in my quest to get health information out, I say one thing that sounds like a no-brainer and then a few months or years later, studies come out “discovering” what really is common sense. Cancer is no different.
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature death in the United States and many other industrialized countries.
Well, I took one puff and my throat constricted and I felt like I inhaled a camp fire as I coughed immediately and vowed to never do that again. As I come from a French Canadian background, smoking seems to “us” as natural as eating or sleeping, when I visit my relatives – they pretty much all smoke (or are in the cycle of vowing to quit). So to me, living a life with nicotine addiction would not have been frowned upon very much.
As the effects of tobacco use in North America are leading to a slow but steady decline in their use, the opposite is true throughout the rest of the world. The big tobacco companies really don’t care too much about all the lawsuits etc in a shrinking market, they are already well ahead of the game in places like China and India - although the profits are not as high, having a strangle hold over more then half of the worlds population without having to worry about regulations more then offsets this.