Essential Advice To Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

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It’s a highly emotive subject, but with cancer touching most of our lives in some form, it’s also a topic we can’t escape from. When it comes to cancer prevention, what we know is actually fairly limited and there are studies out there which seem to contradict each other with their results. Our knowledge on what causes cancer, and how to treat the disease, is constantly evolving.

Please note: this is a contributed post.

What is generally agreed upon by health professionals is that your chances of developing cancer can be impacted by the lifestyle choices you make each day and sometimes by factors in the home environment such as air quality. You may not be able to completely safeguard yourself, but you can take some positive steps with simple changes to your daily life.

You Are What You Eat

Although choosing the healthy options for your weekly menu doesn’t guarantee a cancer-free life, it may help to reduce your risk and certainly keeps your body in optimum condition to fight illness. So make sure you eat a rainbow of different colored fruits and vegetables each day to benefit from the different nutrients each has to offer. Other foods from plant sources such as beans, lentils and whole grains are also great and filling, which means you are less likely to fill up on processed foods, which contain chemicals and hormones whose harmful effects on the body are not fully understood yet.

What we do know is that studies have linked a high consumption of processed meats increases the risk of certain types of cancers. In addition, studies have also shown that eating a Mediterranean Diet with fresh fish, tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil, whole grains and nuts can reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Have Regular Health Checks

Make sure you stick to a schedule of self-exams and medical screenings, such as a yearly pap test or 3d mammogram. Regular check ups mean that any anomalies will be caught early on for far more effective treatment. Certainly if you have a family history of some cancers, you should speak to your doctor about regular screening options.

Cancer prevention also includes protection from certain viral conditions. For example, Hepatitis B can increase the risk of you developing liver cancer, and certain higher risk category individuals are therefore eligible for a vaccine. HPV or Human Papillomavirus can also lead to cancer formation, so investigate the vaccine if you didn’t have it as an adolescent.

Be Sun Safe

With skin cancer on the rise, and being of the most preventable types of cancer, you need to introduce sun smart practices into your daily life. During high summer avoid the sun from 11am-4pm when the rays are strongest, seek to sit in the shade wherever possible and wear a hat and sunglasses, as well as a high factor, broad spectrum sunscreen. And you should never use tanning lamps and limit your time spent at tanning salons. There are many faux tan formulations that will give you that healthy glow while cutting your risk for skin cancer.

While you can’t completely eliminate any cancer risk, you can take effective prevention steps into your own hands and give yourself a positive focus and some peace of mind.

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