Top 14 Recommended Methods of Cancer Prevention

01. Drink Red Wine

Drink Red Wine: Red wine is made from skin of grapes which contains resveratrol and other phytochemicals that have antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties. Researches show that a glass of wine a day can prevent a wide range of cancers like leukemia, skin as well as breast cancer. 

02. Eat Dark Chocolate

Eat Dark Chocolate: Flavonoids like pentamer, present in cocoa, has cancer-fighting properties. Dark chocolate is rich in cocoa and is certainly one of the tastiest ways to help you stay away from cancer. Pollution, radiations and bad living habits pave the way for various kinds of cancer. To effectively combat cancer, adopt a way of living that is pure and simple

03. Avoid Processed Foods 

Avoid Processed Foods: Numerous studies have shown that processed foods and sugar can significantly increase the risk of cancer. Maintaining a healthy diet rich in all nutrients and supplements is one of the basic steps to fight cancer.

04. Steer Clear of Carcinogens

Steer Clear of Carcinogens: It is quite obvious that to prevent cancer, you need to strictly avoid all things that can cause cancer. Alcohol, cigerettes and other recreational drugs are among the top causes of cancer.

05. Get Some Exercise

Get Some Exercise: An inactive lifestyle with no exercise can drastically increase the odds of cancer. Regular exercise strengthens the immune system and helps in the regulation of chemicals, enzymes and hormones in the body.

06. Sleep Soundly

Sleep Soundly: The human body requires a minimum of 8 hours of sleep to regulate all of its functions properly. Regular sleep helps in maintaining a healthy endocrine system and its ability to fight cancer. It is also essential to sleep in complete darkness to promote a healthy endocrine system.

07. Add Garlic to Your Meals

Add Garlic to Your Meals: Garlic has very powerful antioxidant properties. It also strengthens the immune system and helps to prevent cancer. Various studies have shown that garlic can exponentially decrease the odds of stomach cancer.

 08. Reduce Hazardous Interactions

Reduce Hazardous Interactions: There are a variety of environmental factors that can cause cancer. Radiation from mobile phones and other electronic devices can increase the chances of cancer. Limit your exposure to the minimum to combat cancer.

09. Eat Broccoli

Eat Broccoli: Broccoli is one of the super-foods which can help you effectively prevent cancer. However, it is not recommended to microwave broccoli as it destroys its anti carcinogenic flavonoids. It is best to boil broccoli or eat it raw as a snack.

10. Pick power fruits

10. Pick power fruits: "I make smoothies with pomegranates and blueberries because my research shows that both these fruits contain compounds that can slow the growth of certain types of cancer cells." -Shuian Chen, PhD., director, Tumor Cell Biology Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope.

11. Keep the scale steady

Keep the scale steady: "More than 90,000 cancer deaths a year occur due to being overweight. Carrying as little as 10 extra pounds may increase your production of sex hormones like estrogen, raising your risk for breast and uterine cancers. I step on the scale every few days. If the number creeps up, I try to exercise a little more or eat a little less to get back on track." -Ann Kulze, M.D., director, Prevent Cancer Foundation.

12. Go Greek!

Go Greek! "My diet is mostly Mediterranean-plenty of fruits, vegetables, fish, olive oil, whole grains, nuts, and legumes. People who eat this way, exercise regularly, and don't smoke cut their odds of getting cancer by at least 60 percent."-Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., director, MD Anderson Cancer Center's Integrative Medicine Program.

13. Watch your Mouth

Watch your mouth: "Oral cancers are on the rise among people ages 20 to 40, which we believe is because of HPV spread through oral sex. I always look for unusual changes in my patient's mouth, like sores or blisters on the cheeks, tongue, or lips. It usually takes less than two minutes. If your dentist doesn't already do this, ask her to start." -Gigi Meinecke, D.M.D., a dentist in Potomac, Maryland.

14. Spice things up

Spice things up: "Cooking meat over high temps creates carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines, or HCA. I marinate meat and add herbs before grilling. Our studies show that doing this can slash levels of HCA by 40 percent." -J. Scott Smith, Ph.D., chair, Kansas State University's Food Graduate Program.

Killer Soda? Not-So-Sweet News for Cola Lovers

A New Zealand woman's extreme soda habit may have had a hand in her death.

SODA

Bad news cola lovers: Soda isn't the healthiest thirst-quencher in the cooler. In fact, health risks surrounding sugary drinks are increasingly well-documented. Rates of heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes are higher among people who sip them regularly.

In one strange case, experts suspect cola overload may have helped to kill a 30-year-old New Zealand woman who died of a heart attack in February 2010. Natasha Harris reportedly drank 8 to 10 liters of cola per day, according to the Associated Press. In addition to all the soda, however, the mother of eight smoked about 30 cigarettes a day and ate little, the AP reports.

Even if your soda habits aren't that extreme, you may want to pay attention to new information from Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and Harvard University researchers, who found that the more sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas a person consumes, the higher her or his stroke risk. This isn't the first research linking soda and stroke. A February 2011 study of older adults living in Manhattan found a greater risk of stroke, heart attack, and vascular-related death among those who regularly drank diet soda. The new Harvard-Cleveland Clinic study, however, examined the effects of both regular and low-calorie varieties on stroke risk.

For the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers looked at soda consumption among more than 43,371 men and 84,085 women. The men took part of the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study between 1986 and 2008, while the women's data came from the Nurses' Health Study between 1980 and 2008. A total 2,938 strokes were recorded among the women and 1,416 strokes among the men. The Health Professionals and Nurses' Health studies are conducted by a consortium of institutions including Harvard and Brigham and Women's in Boston.

Sugar overload, the researchers hypothesize, may trigger to a series of reactions in the body that can cause atherosclerosis, plaque stability and thrombosis, according to a Mayo Clinic release. All three are ischemic stroke risk factors. And it's a bigger problem for women, whose risk is higher, than men.

Too Much of a Bad Thing:

Harris' case was unusual, but the researchers from Harvard and Cleveland Clinic did find a comparable pattern among heavy soda-drinkers in their study. It seems people who drink soda more often are more prone to making additional unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as working out less and eating more red meat and full-fat dairy.

If all that doesn't convince you to put a cap on soda and start drinking more water, a recent study found students who brought water into exams scored higher than those who didn't, suggesting a little H2O might actually make you smarter. Now that sounds like a reason to hit the water cooler.

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Yogurt that might stop a heart attack

The human gut is home to 100 trillion micro-organisms of 1,500 species

Yogurt that might stop a heart attack
Our guts are home to a microscopic world – and their contents may be a matter of life or death, reports Roger Highfield.

What does it mean to be human? It’s a deceptively simple question, but the answer is complex. The reason is that most of our cells are not human at all. We depend on a vast army of microbes to stay alive: a friendly “microbiome” that protects us against germs, breaks down food to release energy, and produces vitamins.

Your digestive system alone is home to roughly 100 trillion microbes – about 10 times the number of cells in the major organs. A team co-led by Prof Jeroen Raes of the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology has discovered that we all have one of three basic ecosystems of bugs in our guts – but strangely, the type for each person is unrelated to their race, native country or diet. They label these “enterotypes” the “bacteriodes”, “prevotella” and “ruminococcus”, to reflect the species of bug that dominate in each. People with a bacteriodes ecosystem, for example, have a bias towards bacteria that get most of their energy from carbohydrates and proteins.

This revelation has prompted much interest, because it could explain differences in our ability to digest food. A few years ago, Prof Jeffrey Gordon’s team at Washington University School of Medicine found that the intestines of obese people contain a slightly different repertoire of microbes when compared with slim people. In the Flemish study, researchers found a similar correlation between obesity and the abundance of bacteria that extract energy rapidly from food.

Prof Jeremy Nicholson, of Imperial College London, doubts that the latest find is of huge biological significance, since the three enterotypes probably have similar roles and capabilities. Yet he believes that one day, it might be possible to engineer enterotypes, which could be used (for example) to boost the number of calories extracted from poor diets by children in developing countries.

That is not to say that it will be easy. The human gut contains about 1,500 bacterial species, so tinkering with their ecology in a controlled way may be tricky. Although there are products that claim to manipulate bacteria, such as prebiotics, which fuel certain microbes, and probiotics (such as yogurts) that contain live bacteria, we still understand too little to do this reliably.

Yet recognition of the importance of the microbiome is growing. It has already been linked to our understanding of obesity, allergies, diabetes and cancer – and in the past few days, a study has appeared by Prof John Baker at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee that suggests that the types and levels of bacteria in a person’s gut may be used to predict the likelihood of their having a heart attack, too. The find, Prof Baker believes, “is a revolutionary milestone” in the prevention and treatment of such attacks.

As part of his experiments, he and his colleagues induced heart attacks in three separate groups of rats. The first was fed a standard diet. The second was given the antibiotic vancomycin and the third fed a probiotic supplement containing Lactobacillus plantarum, a bacterium that suppresses the production of a hormone called leptin, which is linked to appetite and metabolism.

It turned out that the group treated with the antibiotic also showed decreased levels of leptin – and that the two groups with lower leptin levels suffered less serious heart attacks, and recovered from them better. “We may not be ready to prescribe yogurt to prevent heart attacks, but this research does give us a much better understanding of how the microbiome affects our response to injury,” says Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the journal in which the study appeared.

Prof Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, stresses that more research will be required to show whether the dramatic changes in inflammatory molecules seen in the rats would apply to humans, too. But few doubt that, in the not too distant future, we will get dramatic new insights into our health by studying the shadow world of our microbial passengers.

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