Look at this logically. First, my wife, father, uncle, grandmother, grandfather and several cousins had forms of cancer. Some of them lead "clean" lives. Some didn't, and the source of cancer was clear; my father smoked a lot and got lung cancer. I've had to do a lot of research, and have had many conversations with doctors and specialists. But, I am not an "expert".
However, a few things are undeniably clear. First, we live in a kind of toxic soup; an environment and set of influences we've never historically experienced before. The air, soil, food sources, fertilizers, medications and the science of growing food are all different. And so is the way we process our food. Mix that with genetic tendencies and we have a complex set of interrelated circumstances in which cancer can better find fuel.
The quote in the article "...just beginning to understand how diet, a healthy body weight and regular exercise can protect us against cancer" is shocking. Don't these things make sense for our general well-being, regardless of cancer? Haven't they always contributed to quality of life, regardless of age or location?
My wife is completing her radiation for cancer and is doing, thankfully, quite well. What we experienced consistently, though, is an institutional ignorance of how these true fundamentals ??? diet, weight, exercise ??? can affect acquiring, and banishing, the disease. Even the "nutritionists" they sent in were clueless.
No, you don't have to stop eating red meat or sugar, but you DO have to moderate intake of many foods (like red meat once a month), and approach things like sugar and salt with informed trepidation. Think about it: sugar ain't what it used to be, nor is salt. Salt once had myriad minerals intact, nearly all of which were beneficial to health. Not today! Same with sugar, same with corporately-grown vegetables. Sugar is refined out of benefit then used in nearly everything packaged or cooked. And, the soil is so overworked there???s nothing good left in it.
So, here's the case for naturally-raised and organic food, animal or plant, as expensive as they are: Heart attacks and cancer cost more than organic food. Do any of you out there - including you research doctors - really know how trace pesticides and engineered DNA play against trace medications in our water, air pollution and the lack of daily nutrition? Of course not. But, doesn't approaching this problem this way simply make sense? If it walks and quacks???
The facts are we all have certain genetic tendencies, and we are not breathing, eating and medicating the way we once did (and for millions of years before this). The interplay is deadly.
Be very picky about what you eat. Read every label. Call the numbers on the packaging. It's your body, it's your life. Trust me and the thousands of people and families who???ve been through cancer. You're not doing yourself ??? or society ??? a favor by having that "occasional" Big Mac
Your Lifestyle, Your Genes and Cancer
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
While we don't really understand yet why obesity fosters cancer, cancer promoters could play a role. Obesity leads to high levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in the circulation: theoretically, this could protect early-stage cancer cells scattered throughout the body from dying, since insulin-like growth factor inhibits the action of cell suicide genes. Inflammation also may explain the link between obesity and cancer. Inflammation is a normal body process designed to rid a tissue of infection and to heal it following injury. Cells of the immune system orchestrate inflammation, and some of the weapons they deploy are chemical signals called cytokines. Often, inflammation is brief. If your skin is cut, or develops a bacterial infection, inflammation aids in repairing the wound or eliminating the bacteria. Having done its job, inflammation then subsides.
However, if you have a condition that inflammation cannot rapidly heal, then the inflammation becomes protracted, chronic. The injured tissue is constantly bathed in growth-promoting cytokines that tell stem cells in the tissue to begin multiplying, in order to replace the cells that have been injured and destroyed. If any of these stem cells already have acquired mutations that make them precancerous, cytokines that encourage those cells to multiply can increase the risk that a tumor will start. For example, stomach tissue that can turn cancerous when it is chronically inflamed in response to the bacteria that cause many stomach ulcers. The same thing happens to the lining of gallbladders after years of irritation from gallstones, or to the liver after years of infection with hepatitis viruses.
What does inflammation have to do with obesity? Fat cells release inflammatory chemicals into the circulation that can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. The more overweight we are, the greater the level of inflammatory signals. It is possible that these cytokines act as cancer promoters, but much more research is needed to determine whether that is true.
Regular moderate exercise lowers the levels of both IGF-1 and cytokines in our blood, and it does so even if the exercise does not lead to a healthy weight. It is possible that the lowered levels of these cancer promoters are one explanation for the protective effect of regular exercise. Blood-estrogen levels are lowered by regular exercise in women, and this may be another way that regular exercise protects against getting breast cancer.
Our growing understanding of cancer genes, and how they are influenced by cancer-promoting chemical signals, already has led to important new diagnostic tests and powerful new treatments, and will likely lead to even more important advances in the future. But epidemiological studies of lifestyle and cancer have given us the power, today, to reduce our risk of cancer. While it isn't easy to make changes in lifestyle, it can happen. There are many fewer people using tobacco in the United States today than two generations ago, when the risks of tobacco were first revealed. It may take another two generations to further reduce tobacco use, and to improve our diets, weight and exercise patterns, but it can happen. If it does, our grandchildren are likely to look back at our generation, scratch their heads and wonder why it took so long for us to escape the disease that many of us feared the most, by simple changes in the way we led our lives.
Weinberg is Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research and American Cancer Society Research Professor at MIT, and a Member of the Whitehead Institute. His laboratory discovered the first human oncogene and the first tumor-suppressor gene. He is the author of "One Renegade Cell: The Quest for the Origin of Cancer," published by Basic Books, 1999. Komaroff is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor in chief of the Harvard Health Letter. For more information on lifestyle and cancer, go to health.harvard.edu/newsweek.
© 2008
Discuss