Healthy Lifestyle: Health habits that can help women avoid developing cancer

A new report published this month by the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington DC found that women could dramatically cut their risk of cancer if they would do certain things. As they put it ?everyday choices impact our chances of getting cancer?. Some of those choices increase our risk, and other choices protect us. This is what the Institute recommends for all women:

- Be as lean as possible without being skinny. Learn where you are on the Body Mass Index (BMI) chart and set as a goal the lower end of the healthy spectrum for you. They have learned that extra fat around the waist is especially dangerous, as it releases oestrogen into the bloodstream. You are also less likely to develop diabetes or heart disease if you get back to a healthy weight and maintain it.

- Be physically active for at least 30 minutes everyday.  Any physical activity helps to lower your cancer risk. Try to add more activity into your daily routine, such as walking. It will help to control your weight but it is also very important to prevent cancer. Regular activity keeps your hormones at the best level, which is important, because it is high hormone levels that increase your cancer risk. Activity also makes your immune system stronger, and is good for digestion. For the best effects you should aim for 60 minutes of physical activity that makes you breathe deeper and have your heart beating faster, every day.

- Avoid sugary drinks.  Drinking sugary drinks contributes to weight gain, and it is easy to drink too much of them because they do not give a feeling of fullness. They are very high in calories and include soft drinks like colas, and juice flavoured drinks. Water is the best alternative, but tea and coffee without sugar are also good options. It is best not to drink more than one glass daily of natural fruit juice because of its high calories.

- Limit fattening foods.  It can be difficult to control how much energy you are consuming if you eat a lot of fattening food because you only need to eat a small amount to take in a lot of calories. It?s okay to eat them once in awhile, or in small quantities, but it is important to not to make them the basis of your diet. By choosing a diet based on less fattening foods, you can actually eat more food while consuming fewer calories.

- Eat more of a variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains.  Basing your diet on nutrient-rich plant foods (veggies, fruit, whole grains and beans) can reduce your risk of cancer. For the best health the experts recommend that you base all of your meals on plant foods. That means that when preparing a meal, you should plan to fill 2/3s of your plate with veggies, fruits, whole grains and beans. The research shows that vegetables and fruits protect against a range of cancers because they contain vitamins, minerals and phyto-chemicals (compounds that help to protect cells in the body from damage that can lead to cancer).

- Avoid processed meats like bacon, and eat less red meat such as beef, lamb, and pork.  The experts say that to reduce your cancer risk you should eat little red meats, like beef, pork and lamb, and completely avoid processed meat (ham, bacon, salami, hot dogs and sausages). Red meat has substances that are linked to colon cancer, such as heme iron, which is now known to damage the lining of the colon. Eating processed meat also increases your chances of developing colorectal cancer. When meat is smoked, cured or salted, or otherwise preserved, cancer-causing substances are formed which damage cells in the body that can lead to cancer.

- It is best not to drink alcohol. The well-known health benefit of a daily glass of wine for the heart does not also mean there is a protective effect for cancer. Anything more than 1 drink per day for a woman is risking cancer of your mouth, throat, stomach, breast, liver or rectum. How alcohol causes cancer is not yet proven, but one possibility is that it damages the body?s DNA. With 30% of all women in the 2003 NSW Health Survey reporting frequent excessive drinking, this advice may be unpopular.

- Eat less salty foods and foods preserved with salt.  Salt and salt-preserved foods increase the chance of developing stomach cancer. Most of the salt in your diet comes from processed foods that may not even taste salty, so be sure to check the labels and stay within the guidelines of less than 2,400 milligrams per day.

- Mothers should breastfeed for a minimum of six months with each infant.  Breastfeeding lowers the levels of some cancer-related hormones in the mother?s body, thereby reducing her risk of breast cancer. After breastfeeding, the body sheds breast cells with DNA damage thus reducing the risk of developing cancer in the future.

With cancers causing nearly 25% of women?s deaths in NSW it is important for women to learn about the latest research reports showing how they can protect themselves by their own lifestyle choices day after day. For more information about nutrition and cancer prevention research go to: http://www.aicr.org