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.

Sandy Hutchen Cancer Prevention: Kangaroos are now in the skin cancer prevention business

Understanding how kangaroos repair their DNA could be the key to preventing skin cancer in the future, according to new research by Dr Linda Feketeová and Dr Uta Wille from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Melbourne.

Together with scientists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, Dr Feketeová and Dr Wille are working toward reducing the number of skin cancer-related cases by investigating the chemistry behind potential skin cancer therapies.

The teams are investigating a DNA repair enzyme found in kangaroos and many other organisms, but not humans. This enzyme is very effective in repairing a particular type of DNA damage linked to many skin cancers.

“As summer approaches, excessive exposure to the sun’s harmful UV light will see more than 400,000 Australians diagnosed with skin cancer,” says Dr Feketeová.

“Other research teams have proposed a ‘dream cream’ containing the DNA repair enzyme which you could slap on your skin after a day in the sun. We are now examining whether this would be feasible by looking at the chemistry behind the DNA repair system.”

Using highly sophisticated technology, the groups are simulating the skin’s UV exposure in the laboratory, and then analysing the DNA repair process in a specialised mass spectrometer instrument.

“We were quite surprised that the DNA’s repair process also resulted in a number of chemical by-products, which have never been seen before,” says Dr Wille

“Our plan is to study these products to understand if the DNA repair enzyme could be incorporated into a safe and effective method for skin cancer prevention.”

“But there is still much to investigate before this ‘dream cream’ will be available at the pharmacy, so don’t throw out your sunscreen just yet!” adds Dr Feketeová.

This work will be published as a “hot paper” in the upcoming edition of Chemical Communications.

(Source: University of Melbourne: Chemical Communications: December 2009)