1 out of every 4 deaths in the United States is caused from cancer. It seems the friends & family members who are getting diagnosed with this often fatal disease are also getting younger and younger. When I was diagnosed with cervical cancer at age 31, I heard so many stories of girls in their 20’s having breast cancer and men in the their 40’s having prostate cancer. Children dying from cancer before they even had a chance to really live. There are many factors that contribute to the rates of cancer rising in our World today, many of which come back to our environment and general diet and lifestyle habits. In this modern World things move quickly, and we have gotten away from our roots of gardening, home cooked meals and simpler times with less stress and workloads. As a human race, our lives have changed drastically over the last 100 years, as have our rates of cancer.
You would think that considering this life-altering disease affects so many, either directly or indirectly, there would be more focus on cancer prevention in our World, but sadly, there is not. Almost all of the cancer groups you see publicly (ie: Race for the Cure) go to fund not cancer prevention, but medicine to treat cancer (ie: chemotherapy). Instead of fundamentally trying to fix the problem, money is being thrown at the only solution the Western world can see to treat this disease – poison. When you give your money or time to a charity involving cancer, please make sure it is something that funds research and education rather than just blindly sending even more money to the pharmaceutical companies.
So, what can you do to bring cancer prevention into your own life? First and foremost, get educated! No one is going to just hand you this information – you don’t learn it in elementary school, high school nor college. You don’t learn it when you visit your primary doctor or even when you visit an oncologist. Unless you have the resources to be able to see a naturopath or holisitic doctor, you will most likely never hear of cancer prevention spoken within the 4 walls of the medical industry. It is sad, but true.
In fact, you are going to be saturated with information and advertising that promotes cancer as you make your way through this World. Here is the wikipedia definition of the Standard American Diet (S.A.D. is right!)
“The Western pattern diet, also called Western dietary pattern or the meat-sweet diet, is a dietary habit chosen by many people in some developed countries, and increasingly in developing countries. It is characterized by high intakes of red meat, sugary desserts, high-fat foods, and refined grains. It also typically contains high-fat dairy products, high sugary drinks and higher intakes of processed meats.”
To explain how red meats, sugary desserts, high-fat (of the bad fat sort) foods, refined grains, dairy products, sugary drinks and processed meats can lead to cancer is a book in and of itself and there is not space to go into it in this setting. But one thing that is too important not to mention is the effect that sugar has on your body and the role it plays in health. Cancer cells thrive on sugar. When glucose (sugar) is injected into a cancer patient, cancer cells light up and feed on this new found sugar in the body (which is why a PET scan works – you take in glucose and immediately go for a scan, because at that point the cancer cells will be most active). Our FDA recommended daily allowance of sugar is just 20 grams. Most people consume 20 grams for breakfast alone if you have cereal or granola, some juice and fruit. Our bodies are constantly struggling to keep up with the amount of sugar we flood into our blood stream, and the result is disease.
Sugar is addictive by its very nature and is what causes obesity, diabetes, hormone changes in the brain and even cancer. And it is seemingly in EVERYTHING. There is not even a % listed next to sugar on a food label, while everything else is listed as a percentage. The reason is that even a simple, small bag of licorice would have to say that it’s 350% of your daily value of sugar (650% if you’re a child) on the outside, and if that was the case, people might think twice about buying these products.
PLEASE – if you care at all about the health, well being and longevity of you and your children, watch the movie Fed Up. Or for a Netflix instant queue, check out Hungry For Change.
In the spirit of cancer prevention, let’s focus on foods that help you to fight off cancer, not on foods that expediate the cancer causing process!
It sounds cliche, but EAT WHOLE FOODS! Not that you have to eat things from the store Whole Foods, which might break your bank, but just eat foods that are really, truly, foods. They don’t come in a package. They have tons of natural colors and smells and tastes (some which might be new to you, but I promise, once you start eating whole foods, they will taste amazing and all the fake foods will taste…. well, fake!) Real food has in it what we need – vitamins, nutrients, proteins, enzymes, amino acids, all those good things that our body needs to function and to function optimally. Like the old Hippocrates saying, “Let food be thy medicine, medicine thy food.”
Yes, it’s gonna take a bit more work to make dinner than it is to drive through McDonald’s. But you can pull off a well rounded dinner in 25 minutes, it’s a damn fact. So just do it. You’re worth it! And so is your family.
Not all cancers are diet related, although eating a good anti-cancer diet will benefit everyone in the end. Some cancer are caused by environmental situations, lifestyle choices
the wide open world 