If you could do something to prevent cancer, would you do it? You might say “yes,” but unfortunately you might not actually do it. How’s this for an alarming fact?
At least one-third of annual cancer deaths in the United States are related to dietary factors. Increased fruit and vegetable consumption can reduce cancer risk, but less than one-third of U.S. adults eat the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Eating healthy, including fruits and vegetables loaded with phytochemicals (powerful antioxidants), and following a low fat diet helps people manage weight and prevent disease! Think about it, every day you have choices of what to eat. You have the power to keep yourself healthy from the inside out.
Research from the University of British Columbia has found that depression may hinder a cancer patient’s chances of survival.
The study was conducted on a group of 26 other studies that included 9,417 patients. After examining the results, researchers found that death rates were as much as 25 percent higher with patients who showed symptoms of depression. But the rates were higher (39 percent) in patients who were officially diagnosed with depression.
While it’s always a good idea to keep a positive outlook on life to maintain optimal health, the researchers don’t want people to think it’s life or death to be chipper.
But they do think that the findings emphasize the need to screen cancer patients carefully for signs of psychological distress, since it is a small, but a real, risk of affecting the medical outcome of patients.
There’s now more evidence of how a vegetarian lifestyle can be beneficial. But it’s not altogether convincing either.
In a British study of about 60,000 people, experts found that those who were vegetarian ran less of a risk of developing cancers of the blood, bladder, stomach, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma than the meat-eaters in the study.
Interestingly, this benefit didn’t include all forms of cancer. Bowel cancer was not impacted by the non-meat dietary habits.
It’s never too early to worry about the health impact of being overweight. Besides the standard best known health risks associated with obesity, there are those lesser known, but just as dangerous.
Researchers have found that obese kids between 14- and 19-years-old have a 60 percent higher chance of developing pancreatic cancer than those kids who weighed less.
“This is the first study to explore at which ages excess body weight predisposes an individual to pancreatic cancer,” said Donghui Li, professor of medicine at the University of Texas Anderson Department.
Martin Wiseman, an English health expert and adviser for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), says that there are a significant amount of cancer incidents that could be preventable if people watch their weight.
Wiseman claims that if everyone had a BMI (Body Mass Index) under 25, it would make a significant difference in the cases of new cancer. Those cancers linked to obesity include breast, bowel, kidney, pancreas, esophagus, and womb lining.
Scientists estimate that someone at the top of the healthy weight range, which is between 18.5 and 25, is 15 percent more likely to develop bowel cancer than someone at the bottom.
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