What should you eat to avoid cancer?
Submitted by Dr.Kattlove’s Cancer Blog
This is a question everyone asks and no one can answer. First, why do we think that what we eat can lead to cancer? One major reason is differences in cancer rates between countries. For example, Japanese women have a much lower rate of breast cancer than do women in the West. Many have thought this is due to less fat in the Japanese women’s diet. Indeed Japanese-American women are not protected by their heritage and have breast cancer rates similar to women of European extraction. And, the breast cancer rate in Japan is rising concurrent with the “Westernization” of their diet.
There are also many studies showing that people who eat certain foods – for example fruits and vegetables – and avoid others like lots of red meat, have lower cancer rates. But wait a minute. What about the life style of these healthy eaters? Of course, it is healthier. They smoke less, exercise more, and are probably thinner.
A recent article in the Journal Lancet Oncology looked at this problem of how to know what role diet plays in cancer development. They looked at the example of the role diet plays in developing colon cancer, which has been extensively studied. One example is the many studies that have shown that people suffering from folic acid deficiency have a higher rate of colon cancer. But when researchers tried to prove its role in protecting against colon cancer by feeding folic acid to people, they couldn’t affect their colon cancer rate compared to people who didn’t take large amounts of this vitamin. Why? Maybe because people who have good levels of folic acid in their body get it by eating lots of fruits and vegetables.
There are many studies like these where researchers feed people various vitamins or other chemicals called “micronutrients” and fail to drop cancer rates even though people who eat foods containing these do have less cancer. What this proves is that you can’t break a diet down into its components. Also, we don’t know, as I said earlier, what else these fruit and vegetable eaters are doing. Not smoking? Exercising?
We know one thing for certain about diet. Eating too much, probably regardless of what is eaten, is bad. The cancer rate in fat people is about 30 percent higher than in average weight people. But that is all we are sure of except for the healthy life style. People who eat wisely and judiciously, exercise, and don’t smoke will have less cancer.
Unfortunately, none of this is easy if you aren’t into a healthy life style. But switching now can save a lot of grief later.
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