Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Cancer risk can be markedly reduced through everyday decisions regarding diet, exercise and smoking.

Here are the 10 ways.

1. Moderate your alcohol consumption: drinking alcohol increases the risks of cancers of the pharynx, mouth, larynx, rectum, esophagus, colon, and liver. Women should limit themselves to one alcoholic beverage per day. Men should limit themselves to two.

2. Eat plenty of raw fruits and vegetables: The American Cancer Society recommendation is to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables daily since they are loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other substances that decrease the risk of cancer. Recent studies have shown that the connection between eating vegetables and fruits and lower risk of cancer risk isn’t as strong as once thought. However the majority of researchers still subscribe to the idea that a plant-based diet is one of the best ways to secure overall health.

3. Think about chemoprevention: Chemoprevention is using natural or synthetic compounds to reduce the cancer risk or recurrence. Tamoxifen, prescribed to prevent breast cancer in women, is the most famous chemoprevention agent. The downside: chemoprevention drugs may have serious side effects.

4. Decrease the amount of fat in your diet: Studies suggest that high-fat diets are linked to several types of cancer, including postmenopausal breast, colon, and lung cancer. High-fat diets are usually high in calories and increase the risk of obesity. More study is required to understand which types of fat should be avoided and what amount effects cancer risk.

5. Stay within your ideal weight zone: Being overweight will tend to increase the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer as well as cancers of the endometrium, colon, esophagus and kidney. There have been studies showing that obesity increases the risk of cancers of the prostate, liver, stomach, gallbladder, pancreas, ovary and cervix. Some studies estimate that excess weight is a factor in 15 to 20 percent of cancer-related deaths.

6. Get screening exams: Pap tests, mammograms, colonoscopies and other routine screenings obviously don’t prevent cancer. But screenings will detect cancers early, when treatment is more likely to be successful.

7. Exercise: Evidence increasingly suggests that people who exercise have lower risk of certain cancers than those who are sedentary. From 45 to 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day, on most days of the week, is considered optimal to decrease the risk of breast and colorectal cancers.

8. Limit radiation exposure: Ultraviolet (UV) radiation, from the sun, sunlamps or commercial tanning beds, is the primary cause of skin cancer.

9. Stop smoking or don’t start smoking: The risk of cancers caused by smoking is proportional with the length of time a person has smoked and the quantity of cigarettes smoked. Lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death among Americans is caused by smoking. Quitting smoking decreases the risk of lung cancer and it is never too late to take action on this.

10. Guard yourself from infection: Infections caused by viruses are well known to be risk factors for a wide variety of cancers. Human papillomavirus (HPV), which is a sexually transmitted disease, is the most frequent cause of cervical cancer. Chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis C aggravate the risk of liver cancer. They are usually spread by contact with contaminated blood, contaminated needles or sex. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that leads to AIDS, additionally increase the risk of many cancers.

British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is urging men over 50 years-old to get regular tests for prostate cancer after he was successfully treated for the disease last year and given the all-clear.

Lloyd Webber, 61, said in a health diary published on his website that he noticed the first symptoms of his cancer last summer and underwent an operation to remove his prostate gland after a biopsy came back positive.

He was told the cancer had been caught early and the treatment was successful, but he then battled an underlying e-coli infection that had been there all along.

“If that infection had been found and cured, I could have been blissfully unaware that I had a cancerous tumor that was on the verge of breaking loose around the rest of my body. I could have thought that my frequent peeing was due to a weak bladder. I have been bloody lucky,” wrote Lloyd Webber.

“I say to every red-blooded male, if you do begin to have a problem down under, however embarrassing, go to your GP at once. Even if you don’t have any symptoms, if you are over 50 get regular PSA (prostate specific antigen) tests.”

Lloyd Webber, the composer behind hit musicals including “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Cats” and “Starlight Express,” is staging a sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera” called “Love Never Dies” that is due to open in London in March this year.

He has also just kicked off a search for Dorothy to star in his West End production of “The Wizard of Oz” with his search to be the topic of a BBC television talent show.

Interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber

Racial and ethnic differences in cancer survival are greatest for cancers that can be more easily detected and treated. including breast and prostate cancer, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University. These differences are small with cancers that are harder to detect and treat such as pancreatic and lung cancer.

The findings, published in the October 2009 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention, highlight the need to develop specific health policies and interventions to address social disparities.

Although prior studies have focused on factors that contribute to disparities in specific cancers, the Mailman School researchers’ goal in this study was to understand why racial/ethnic disparities emerge in some cancers but not others. The study used data from more than 580,000 cancer cases in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries to compare racial/ethnic differences in survival across a spectrum of cancers, classified according to their five-year relative survival rates as a measure of how amenable each cancer is to medical interventions. The authors hypothesized that racial/ethnic disparities increase as medical interventions improve overall survival because individuals with more socioeconomic resources are in a better position to exploit medical advances to protect their health.

The results found that, as compared with whites, substantial survival disparities existed in more treatable cancers in African-Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Hispanics, and several subgroups of the Asian/Pacific Islander population.