LIFESTYLE AND CANCER

Cancer isn’t about diet or supplementation alone. Your lifestyle also plays an important part in strengthening your immune system against cancer. Here are some lifestyle changes you need to practice to reduce your risk of cancer:

1. Lead a happy stress free life. Stress, depression, anxiety, hostility and fatique weaken the immune system. Learn relaxation and stress management techniques such as santabi (meditation) and deep breathing.

2. Decrease your exposure to known carcinogens like emission from factories, cars, lorries, buses and boats, from cleaning fluids, chemical laden cosmetics, fluoride in water supplies and in toothpaste, cold tar, plastic containing vinyl chloride, polystyrene used in food containers, pesticides and their residue and much, much more.

3. Never heat food in plastic and minimize liquid foods exposed to flexible plastic.

4. Radiation causes cancer, minimize your exposure to X-rays.

5. Don’t drink alcohol. According to the World Health Organisation drinking alcohol has been linked to the cancer of the throat, mouth, larynx, pharynx, oesophagus, bladder, breast and liver.

6. Don’t smoke and avoid second hand smoke. Cigarette smoke contains about 40 different cancer causing substances.

7. To maintain a healthy weight, keep physically active. Recent guidelines suggest 30 minutes of any kind of activity everyday. The more you do the greater the health rewards.

Regular exercise helps to:

a) Lower the estrogen levels in women. A high level of the hormone estrogen increases your risk of cancer.
b) Oxygenates the tissue. “Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment.
c) Stabilize blood sugar levels, depriving cancer cells of their favorite fuel.
d) Speed up eliminating waste from the body thus reducing your risk of colon and rectal cancers.
e) Improve stress tolerance.
f) Eliminate harmful by-products like estrogen and uric acid.
g) Burn fatty tissue.

*Let go any emotional baggage that you have been carrying along in your life. Learn how to forgive and forget.
*Breastfeed your babies. Studies show that breast-feeding reduces the risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer in premenopausal women.

* Avoid overexposure from the sun. Frequent exposure of the body to the sun may lead to skin cancer.
* All premenopaused women should do a regular breast self-examination, a yearly clinical examination by your doctor and if you are above 50 you should go for a mammogram annually.
* Regular pap smears to detect cervical cancer early.
* Use stainless steel cookware. No aluminium wares.
* Avoid chemicals such as hair sprays, cleaning compounds, waxes, fresh paints and garden pesticides.
* Do not take any drugs except those prescribed by your doctor.

- Bruce Miller’s Better Health Series.