June 04, 2023

Anti-cancer Diet: Recovery and Prevention

Aiding Recovery and Prevention of Cancer

Hi Everyone! This post is about an anti-cancer diet and lifestyle that may aid in the recovery and prevention of cancer. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 30-50% of all cancer cases are preventable.

WHO has stated that dietary and lifestyle factors, physical inactivity, and being overweight significantly contribute to cancer.

Even people with ‘cancer genes’ may not develop cancer without dietary and lifestyle insults that turn healthy cells into abnormal cells that thrive in an inflamed microenvironment.

You can help yourself and your family to be more protected against cancer by living in an anti-inflammatory, gut-healthy way. By reading on, you can learn why an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle may help you prevent and reduce an environment for tumor cells to survive and grow.

What Diet Helps Prevent Cancer?

How Is Inflammation Linked to Cancer?

Are Genetic Cancers Common?

How Can You Reduce Cancer With a Diet?

How Can Lifestyle Change Gut Health?

Infections and Cancer

Weight Loss Will Protect Against Cancer

Stress and Cancer

Personalized Advice for Cancer Prevention and Recovery

What Diet Helps Prevent Cancer?

An anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle will not only encourage weight loss (obesity is one of the leading causes of cancer) but may help prevent and reduce the chances of tumor growth because tumor cells survive where chronic inflammation exists.

Targeted at gut health, an anti-inflammatory diet promotes good bacteria diversity, regulates inflammation, and provides anti-tumoral effects in gut bacteria.

For instance, as one example, some bacteria can stimulate cancer formation by blocking immune cells that usually inhibit the growth of tumors.

Unhealthy food, chemicals, additives, lack of exercise and sleep, being overweight, stress, toxins, alcohol, smoking, and pollutants are some factors that increase pro-inflammatory cytokines, inflammatory enzymes, adhesion molecules, chemokines, and so on.

Read: Why Aspartame Is Linked to Cancer.

Living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle will provide you with more protection; the sooner you start, the better. We need to educate our younger loved ones!

How Is Inflammation Linked to Cancer?

Inflammation has powerful effects on not only the development of cancer but also the spreading of cancer because it allows tumor cell survival.

A chronic inflammation microenvironment causes DNA damage and cell mutation, allowing tumor cell survival and growth.

Microbial pathogens are known to drive the growth of tumors, and many malignancies are associated with gut health imbalance.

Inflammation can exist in the body without symptoms for a long time. You may be interested in reading Signs of Inflammation That May Surprise You and How to Silence Hidden Inflammation.

Are Genetic Cancers Common?

According to Cancer Research UK, it doesn’t mean you have a cancer gene if you have relatives with cancer.

Cancers from inherited genes are less common than you may think (5-10%). Most cancers develop because of our environment, diet, lifestyle, and chance, not because of specific genetic inheritance.

Inherited genes usually have a pattern. The more relatives with the same or similar cancer, and the younger they were at diagnosis, the stronger the chances of a family history of cancer are.

Inherited genes mean you have a higher risk of developing diseases, but further gene changes need to happen for cancer to develop.

I always advise making your body less inflammatory, even if you don’t have apparent symptoms or non-communicable diseases that run in the family. 78% of deaths are linked to chronic inflammation.

How Can You Reduce Cancer With a Diet?

According to The Lancet, more than 19 million new cancer cases were diagnosed in 2020 worldwide. By 2040, that burden is expected to increase to around 30 million new cancer cases annually. 

Cancer is a disease caused by many factors, including diet, lifestyle, immune response, hormones, stress, genetics, and environment.

When you consider WHO’s statement that 30-50% of cancer cases are preventable, you can better bolster against cancer by looking at the factors of diet, lifestyle, stress, etc. It is hard to escape chemicals and toxins because they are everywhere, but tobacco, alcohol, and obesity remain the leading causes.

What we feed ourselves has a significant impact on the risk of disease.

Focusing on gut health to reduce inflammation and boost immunity is a great place to start if you don’t smoke and drink in moderation.

Obesity is a chronic inflammatory condition, which is treated with this anti-inflammatory lifestyle, as well as better protection from cancer.

If you think about tumor cells needing an inflammatory environment to grow, reducing inflammation gives them less chance of survival.

A powerful anti-inflammatory technique involves the bacteria in your gut.

The bacteria in your gut have the unique ability to reduce inflammation, as well as strengthen your immunity, and reduce metabolic, infectious, and chronic diseases. The bacteria in your gut can even lessen genetic expression (epigenetics) if certain cancers do run in your family.

Gut bacteria also promote regular, quality sleep by producing serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitters, which assist your body in optimum health! (The production of serotonin and dopamine will also aid your mental health). 

It’s astonishing what balancing your gut bacteria will do for you mentally and physically! The power of those microbes in your gut should not be underestimated!

Plus, eating a wide variety of the proper nutrients daily in your anti-cancer diet that work synergistically together will prevent cellular stress, boost immunity, and reduce fat cell composition, as they aid in inhibiting inflammation and optimizing health.

If you eat anti-inflammatory foods predominantly, you can get away with having pro-inflammatory foods occasionally. A more detailed anti-cancer diet and recovery protocol are in the personalized advice. You can access that section here or click on the link below.

In case you missed these posts: What Foods Help With Cancer Prevention and Recovery?, How Can You Prevent and Treat Cervical Cancer?

How Can Lifestyle Change Gut Health?

Of course, the bacteria in your gut cannot change your lifestyle, but your lifestyle can change your gut bacteria.

(However, those bugs in your tummy have the power to let your brain know what it needs to survive. Good food or junk food, feed it, and it will grow and want more! Yet, you can soon change it around).

So, your gut bacteria changes if there are any stressors, and it becomes less diverse, increasing inflammation and dysregulating the immune system. If you are exposed to smoke, pollution, or lots of chemicals, these will change your bacteria, reduce immunity, and keep inflammation high.

Diet, lifestyle, and immune system are among the factors that influence microbiota composition and activity.

You may enjoy the post: The Benefits of Sun Exposure, which includes how to sunbathe safely to avoid skin cancer. Did you know that too little sunshine can be detrimental to other cancers?

Infections and Cancer

Cancers are linked to infections like hepatitis, H-pylori, and HPV.

During infection and bacterial overgrowth, bacterial pathogens can expand and release toxins when the gut is affected by dysbiosis (imbalance).

These toxins cause DNA breakdown, which can contribute to DNA mutations, tumor initiation, and the progression of cancer cells.

Your immunity is improved with less inflammation in your body because chronic inflammation is a dysregulation of the immune system.

You may be interested in reading How to Recover From Virus Infections.

Members, reduce bacterial overgrowth by following the advice for candida and h-pylori here.

Weight Loss Will Protect Against Cancer

Cancer Research UK states that obesity is the cause of 13 different types of cancer, and having a healthy diet overall, which will reduce weight, can reduce the risk of cancer.

Members, you can kickstart weight loss on the 6-week Reset. Large amounts of weight can be lost initially, and then weight reduces continuously, daily, as optimal health returns. The beautiful thing is that it is safe and nutritious and heals your chronic inflammatory condition and symptoms. There are no health risks, and it isn’t temporary. Not many weight loss schemes can say the same!

Read: Low-calorie Foods for Weight Loss & How Can You Lose a Lot of Weight Fast?

Stress and Cancer

Chronic stress over some time can cause gastrointestinal disorders, which lead to gut dysbiosis, which leads to inflammation and dysregulation of the immune system.

It can cause anxiety and depression and increase the risk of developing diseases, including cancer.

Excessive stress hormones also prevent immune cells from effectively controlling cancer cells by increasing inflammation and suppressing immunity.

Not all things that cause stress are controllable, I know, but there are many ways to reduce stress that will aid in dealing with uncontrollable stress-related incidences.

For instance, stress worsens if you don’t eat or drink well, get little sleep, and exercise. Have you heard my conversation with Dr. Tamsin Lewis on the links between mental health and physical health?

Personalized Advice for Cancer Prevention and Recovery

New members, check the Lifestyle Guide on how to navigate this lifestyle, which will aid in stress reduction profusely. Also, check the personalized advice on depression and anxiety.

Please check the Personalized Advice section on what else to do for Cancer Prevention and Recovery.

Or, if you would like to have a confidential 15-minute Zoom consultation with me, please book it here.

Non-members, here are some taster recipes: Egg Muffins: Sweet Potatoes, Carrots & Chives & Asian Chicken Soup With Konjac Noodles.

You may also like to visit the podcasts section. A host of subjects are covered with my wonderful guests, including cancer survival, stress reduction, food additives and your microbiome, mental health, mindset tips, and the immune system.

While the evidence continues accumulating about cancer protection and reduction with an anti-cancer diet and lifestyle, following the Eat Burn Sleep way of eating, moving, thinking, reducing stress, and sleeping will likely help (check the reviews)!

After all, there is a strong correlation between not paying attention to what we eat and how we live, which causes chronic inflammation and cancer risk. Taking into account that cancer cells love an inflammatory microenvironment.

Please look after yourself.

As always, I wish you well.

Yalda Alaoui

Author

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