The Real He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named Cancer is the true monster of modern times, the real Lord Voldemort, only, unlike He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, people speak the word cancer all the time, so much so that we can’t get through a single day without hearing that someone we know has it or might have it, or that something we love doing or eating causes it. It’s only natural that most of us have grown to be paranoid about cancer. Personally, I knew my paranoia had grown to extreme and messed up dimensions when one day a few years ago, while driving, I laid my right hand against my lap and felt a large, soft lump. Within milliseconds, panic set in and I imagined a positive biopsy, months of painful and debilitating chemo, and an ignoble death in some hospice. Luckily, the lump turned out to be the smooshed-up Mounds Bar I’d jammed in my pocket a few hours earlier, but the speed at which I’d jumped to my ridiculous conclusion convinced me that I needed to do something about my paranoia. I set out to know this horrible enemy and come up with a preventative nutritional/lifestyle plan. The result was a series of “weapons” against cancer, each based on science, research, deductive reasoning, and maybe a little bit of wishful thinking. There aren’t any guarantees it’ll actually save me from cancer, but I’ve got a good degree of faith that it’ll help. So, for my fellow paranoiacs, here are my anti-cancer weapons. The good news is that, based on the fact that you’re on this site, you’re already doing something that’s hugely protective against cancer, and that’s the first weapon. 1 – Lift Weights to Crush Cancer Men who lift weights, and who have a high degree of muscular strength, have a 40% lower risk of dying from cancer. Similarly, men who have weaker handgrip strength have an increased risk of cancer. Exercise in general helps women fight breast cancer. Recently, Jeroen van Vugt, a graduate student in Rotterdam, examined the patient profiles of 206 people with an aggressive type of colon cancer. All of them had undergone surgery and 44% of them lost enough weight to be diagnosed with sarcopenia, a degenerative loss of muscle mass (1). Patients in this group were more prone to surgical complications and had additional surgeries 2.1 times more often than patients with a healthy amount of muscle mass. Enthused by what he had discovered, van Vugt then followed another group of 816 colorectal cancer patients from whom doctors had removed affected organs. What van Vugt found was that people with more muscular density died less frequently than those with low muscle density. There’s a lot more positive research, too. Suffice it to say that the evidence that strength training prevents you from dying prematurely from cancer or anything else is overwhelming. Whether it does this by increasing insulin sensitivity, reducing body fat, causing the release of the myokine IL-6 (which fights inflammation), or stimulating AMPK production (which starves cancer cells), isn’t known for sure, but all those effects probably play a role. The message, of course, is this: Keep pumping. 2 – Eat Carrots to Kick Prostate Cancer’s Ass Chinese epidemiologists, after scanning ten epidemiological studies, found a stunning correlation between eating carrots and the rate of prostate cancer (2). They found that the more often men ate carrots, and the greater the amount of carrots eaten, the less likely they were to get prostate cancer. They even came up with some definitive numbers: For every 10 grams of carrots consumed each day, men reduced their risk of developing prostate cancer by 5%. That means that if men had at least 50 grams of carrots a day, their chances of developing prostate cancer could be cut in half. The researchers think it has something to do with the large amount of cancer-fighting carotenoids found in carrots. The average carrot weighs about 72 grams, and a cup of chopped carrots weighs around 122 grams, so it’s not like you have to eat a Bugs Bunny bushel-full of carrots to get to your 50-gram goal. Just one carrot a day should give you some protection against the most frightening of male maladies. 3 – Take Vitamin D to Iron-Plate Your Immune System A really weird thing pops out at you if you start looking at epidemiological studies pertaining to mortality rates from health conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes: The farther you get from the equator, the higher the mortality rate from these diseases (3). Likewise, the survival rate of patients with the aforementioned diseases increases if the diagnosis was made in the summer months. Figure it out yet? Increased distance from the equator and winter both equate to decreased exposure to sunlight, particularly the UV-B radiation that’s needed for the synthesis of Vitamin D, a vital component of the immune system. Unfortunately, only a few foods contain appreciable levels of vitamin D. These include salmon, cod liver oil, mushrooms, and to a lesser
Origin: 8 Weapons to Kick Cancer’s Butt