Preventing cancer is probably a lot easier than you think, and it all comes down to five golden rules: No more cigarettes; get to a healthy weight and stay there; exercise regularly; drink less booze; and eat more fruits and veggies. Now, these sound like good tenets to live by in general — but according to a new study, they can cut your risk of cancer by nearly 20 percent.
The long-term health study first kicked off in the ‘80s, and the results are finally in. French scientists have spent the past several decades tracking 65,000 women, examining how many of them developed cancer and calculating how many of them could have hypothetically prevented it. Just under 7,000 women participating in the study ended up with some form of cancer — but women who followed the five steps were 19 percent less likely get any kind of cancer. Risk of breast cancer went down by about 13 percent, bowel cancer by 44 percent, and womb cancer by a whopping 55 percent. Furthermore, the study found that living by the five rules could have prevented nearly half of all cases of lung cancer.
Oliver Childs of the research organization Cancer Research UK commented, “This study reinforces a hugely important message — making healthy lifestyle choices is crucial to our overall health as well as our cancer risk. More than four in 10 cancer cases could be prevented by changes such as not smoking, keeping a healthy body weight, and cutting back on booze.” Four in 10! That, as they say, ain’t nothin’; in fact, it’s a whole lot of somethin’.
But even if going by all five rules seems a little daunting, even making one change can go a long way towards keeping cancer at bay — and keeping you healthier overall. Why not start by making over lunchtime with these delish eats?
