Healthbolt

Cancer Prevention: 31 Simple Things You Can Do to Reduce Your Risk.

by Liz on July 28th, 2008

An email from Mike Street from RD.com (the Reader’s Digest site) led me to this comprehensive list of 31 Simple Ways to Prevent Cancer. Turns out that I already do a number of them - drinking green tea, taking a multivitamn, walking every day, and getting my 15 minutes of sunshine. But RD.com also listed a few that I would never had considered, such as…

• Serve sauerkraut at your next picnic. A Finnish study found that the fermentation process involved in making sauerkraut produces several other cancer-fighting compounds, including ITCs, indoles, and sulforaphane. To reduce the sodium content, rinse canned or jarred sauerkraut before eating.
• Coat barbecue food with a thick sauce. Grilling meat can create a variety of cancer-causing chemicals. But researchers from the American Institute for Cancer Research found that coating the meat with a thick marinade and thereby preventing direct contact with the charring flames reduced the amount of such chemicals created.
• Every time you go to the bathroom, stop by the kitchen or water cooler for a glass of water. A major study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1996 found that men who drank six 8-ounce glasses of water every day slashed their risk of bladder cancer in half. Another study linked the amount of water women drank to their risk of colon cancer, with heavy water drinkers reducing their risk up to 45 percent.
• Have a beer tonight. Beer protects against the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, known to cause ulcers and possibly linked to stomach cancer. But don’t overdo it. Drinking more than one or two alcoholic drinks a day may increase your risk of mouth, throat, esophageal, liver, and breast cancer.

Okay, so I might skip on the sauerkraut and also the BBQ (hey, it’s winter in New Zealand) but I could, I guess, work on having a beer tonight.

Meanwhile,  I’d recommend that you head over to RD.com and have a read of the complete list. It might surprise you, or not.

And do let us know what you think are the four top ’simple ways to help prevent/reduce the risk of cancer.’ 

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POSTED IN: Cancer, Diet, Drink, Easy Health Tips, Exercise, Fitness, Food, Happy Living Tip, Health, How To, Nutrition, Prevention