Cancer is a scary disease. It can affect anyone at any time. Because of this, everyone should make cancer prevention a top priority. While there isn’t a way to guarantee you’ll never develop some form of cancer, there are several things you can do to lower your overall risk.
Stop Smoking
Either stop smoking regular cigarettes completely or switch to using electronic vape and e-liquid. Many people don’t realize that lung cancer claims nearly 160,000 lives each year. It’s the second-most-common form of cancer, coming in right behind skin cancer. There are two different forms of lung cancer — small-cell and non-small-cell. It affects the cells lining the inside of your lungs, eventually making it really difficult to breathe. Smokers are at high risk for lung cancer, but quitting reduces your risk — even if you’ve been smoking for years. In addition to avoiding cigarettes, you should also avoid secondhand smoke. If you live with a smoker, encourage that person to quit smoking. Don’t allow people to smoke in your home. If friends or family members smoke, have them take it outside so everyone else in the house isn’t breathing in secondhand smoke from their cigarette or cigar.
Get to a Healthy Weight and Maintain It
Overweight people have a higher risk of developing several different kinds of cancer, including breast, pancreatic, colon, and kidney cancer. Talk to your doctor to determine a good weight range for your body build and type. Then, develop a healthy eating and exercise plan to help you get down to your desired weight. Once you reach your goal weight, it’s extremely important to maintain it. Don’t go back to unhealthy eating habits or stop exercising once you’ve reached a healthy weight range.
Eat Healthy
Eating healthy foods nourishes your body and lowers your overall risk of developing certain types of cancer. It’s important to include healthy grains, fruits, vegetable, poultry, and fish in your diet regularly. Also, you should limit the amount of red meat you consume, because eating more processed and red meat has been known to increase the risk of numerous cancer types. A few good healthy eating guidelines to follow include:
- Limit the amount of red meat (pork, beef, and lamb) and the amount of processed meat (lunch meats, hot dogs, bacon, and sausage) you consume as much as possible. These aren’t the type of meats you should be eating on a regular basis. When you do eat meat, choose turkey, chicken, and fish instead.
- Eat bread, pasta, and cereal made from whole grains, not refined grains. Also, choose brown rice instead of white rice.
- Limit the number of sweets you eat. Ideally, you should try hard to limit the amount of refined sugar you eat as much as possible.
- Make sure your diet includes at least 2.5 cups of vegetables and fruit each day.
- Drink more water. Avoid sugary drinks that are high in calories and diet sodas.
- Limit your alcohol intake.
Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise decreases your risk of developing breast, colon, prostate, and endometrium cancers, as well as other serious diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. This doesn’t mean that you need to live at the gym either. Simply taking a 30-minute brisk walk each day lowers your risk of developing cancer immensely. If you do high-impact exercises that’s great, but you should at least take a 30-minute walk every single day. Also, keep in mind, regular exercise has several other benefits as well. It helps reduce stress, improve your mood, improves circulation, and gives you more energy.
Everyone should be concerned about cancer risk because no one is immune. Take the time to learn various ways you can lower your risk of developing cancer and implement them into your life on a regular basis. Your body will thank you for it later.
