Lifestyle changes that may help you to avoid cancer

Our lifestyle patterns can majorly affect our health and overall wellness. This applies to both people with and without cancer. Adopting a healthy lifestyle mirrors positive changes which contribute significantly towards cancer prevention. Furthermore, your lifestyle pattern also determines your chances of developing cancer. Even today, everything we know about cancer prevention is constantly evolving. The risk of developing cancer and a person’s individual risk can differ based on lifestyle and environmental factors. But it’s a known fact that your chances of developing cancer are affected by your lifestyle choices. Thus, if you want to avoid cancer, you need to make healthy changes to it. Here are a few cancer prevention tips you can follow.

Avoid Consuming Tobacco:

Using tobacco puts you on the path to meet cancer. Cigarette smoking is the reason behind almost 90% of lung cancer deaths. It also increases your chances of “mouth, throat, larynx, pancreas, bladder, cervix and kidney” cancers. Other sources of tobacco, such as cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco, also increases your risk of getting cancer. Even exposure to passive smoking can lead to lung cancer. So, avoiding the use of tobacco is crucial for cancer prevention. Quitting tobacco products immediately, reduces your risk of cancer. If you need help with quitting tobacco, you can try stop-smoking products or ask your doctor for other strategies.

Eat a Healthy Diet:

With our busy schedules and time constraints, we often end up eating irregularly or indulging in bad eating habits. We also tend to skip meals and eat junk food. However, we don’t realize the consequences of such habits. It impacts our health significantly. Making a healthy choice at mealtime or at the grocery store does not guarantee cancer prevention but may reduce your risk. Include plenty of fruits and vegetables in your diet, along with whole grains and beans. Avoid eating high-calorie foods such as fats from animal sources and refined sugars. Drink alcohol in moderation. Extreme alcohol consumption increases your risk of breast, colon, lung, kidney and liver cancers. Avoid processed meats and include naturally colored foods, rich in antioxidants, as part of your diet.

Maintain a Healthy Weight:

Because of our sedentary lifestyle, we often remain physically inactive. This results in unnecessary weight gain, which later on leads to obesity. Later on, any kind of excessive weight gain always leads to multiple health problems, including cancer. Thus, maintaining a healthy weight might lower your risk of cancer. Physical activities are also important. They not only help in controlling your weight but also reduce the risk of colon and breast cancer.

Avoid Stepping Out in the Sun:

Over-exposure to the sun can increase your risk of getting skin cancer. It is one of the most common kinds of cancer and also the most preventable one. Our body needs Vitamin D, which we get from the sun. However, over-exposure to the sun can also cause cancer. But you can prevent this by safe exposure to the sun and by avoiding sunburns. Keep to the shade when you are outdoors. Cover exposed areas of your skin while stepping out in the sun. Use good quality sunblock and sunscreen. Opt for bright colored clothes over dark, as they repel the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Avoid sunlamps and tanning beds as they are equally damaging as the sun.

Regular Health Check-ups:

Remember, health is everything. So you need to be careful about your health. Make your preventive health check-ups more regular. Early detection increases your chances of curing cancer completely. The treatment for cancer discovered at an early stage is most likely to be successful. Therefore, get yourself screened for various types of cancers and be assured of your health.