I'm not a doctor
or an expert, but this is something I've learned a lot about over the
last couple of years. Before I was diagnosed, I thought I was really
healthy and doing so so much good stuff to be proactive and so
on...but now, looking back, I can't believe the things I did to my
body, not even knowing. So yeah, I used to do all this stuff. But
look where that got me! So don't be the fool I was, friends....
I
haven't really bothered to source all this. Most of it is pretty
uncontroversial and widely known. BPA bad, vegetables good. I threw in
a couple links, but for the most part, if you think something is
wrong, you can call me on it; but I'd prefer you just googled till
you find the study I'm referencing cause that's what I'm gonna do if you try to say I don't know what I'm talking about. Like I
said, I'm no doctor—but unless you are, or also have cancer, I can
assure you that I've spent more time reading up on this stuff than
you have. So take advantage of my many hours of reading and trying to
find sources that didn't agree with these things, because I don't want
them to be true any more than you do, and read on....
(Or
you could just read this American Cancer Society page, but I already
wrote this whole thing so you may as well read it. But you will
notice it says a lot of the same things as me.)
Don't eat or drink out of plastic!
Especially don't store hot foods in
plastic, or heat in Tupperware in the microwave, but even cold
storage (like water bottles) is very bad. Most plastics contain BPA,
a proven carcinogen and possibly one of the main culprits of the
modern breast cancer epidemic. When I see people drinking water out
of plastic bottles, I cringe and fight the urge to knock them out of
their hands like a lit bomb. Can linings also are plastic, and
contain BPA; acidic foods especially soak up the BPA, so if you stop
buying only one thing in cans, make it tomatoes/ tomato sauce.
Canning jars and metal water bottles
are totally great and easy to come by! (Though for other health
reasons I would stay away from aluminum in choosing a metal
container). Glass food storage containers are also becoming more and
more common, though I would point out that most brands have BPA
containing tops; I like to put them in the fridge till the food is
cool before putting the lid on. I may be fooling myself that it makes
a difference but it can't hurt.
Seriously.
Right now. I
am vegetarian, and if you really want to be as healthy as possible I
personally think you should be too, but that is negotiable. It's
possible to eat meat or eggs and still have a really healthy diet. But dairy
is just plain terrible for you. It increases internal inflammation,
which is implicated in all kinds of health problems, from chronic
pain to diabetes, depression, allergies, intestinal disorders, and
more; plus it compromises the health of your cells, significantly
increasing the risk of cancer. Dairy is associated with numerous
cancers (breast, ovarian, colon, and more), but most of all with
prostate cancer (the #1 cancer affecting American men, with one in
six being diagnosed at some point in their lives).
There are also
great environmental benefits to veganism, and factory farming is cruel and awful.
But even raw, organic, pastured, pet goat dairy is bad for you. Also,
milk is not an efficient way of getting calcium or Vit D; the best way to do
this with food is green vegetables.
Stay away from trans fats as much as
possible.
Eating a lot of
any kind of fat is bad for you, and you probably shouldn't. But
especially bad are trans fats. The main source of trans fatty acids
in the American diet is partially hydrogenated oils. Margarine,
anything deep fried, most things fried from a restaurant, and many
packaged foods (cookies, chips, pretzels, etc) are high sources of
partially hydrogenated oils. Overheating good oils also causes them to become trans fats. One study showed consumption of high
levels of trans fats raising the risk of breast cancer by 75%;
whatever the numbers, no one out there is saying it's anything but
bad for you. It's so bad that even the corporations aren't trying to
whitewash it—it's just impossible. It's that bad for you.
Instead, use olive
oil. And don't preheat the cooking pan. Easy and good for you. DO NOT use canola oil! See below.
Eat vegetables!
Even
if you still do all of the terrible things above, you can still cut
your risk of cancer by eating vegetables and fruits. A quote; “...for
most cancer(s), persons with low fruit and vegetable intake (at least
the lower one-fourth of the population) experience about twice the
risk of cancer compared with those with high intake....”
What more do you need to know?!
A link.
Vegetables are
amazing. I mean, I always knew they were good for you; everyone knows
that, right? But the more I learn the more I am blown away by the
incredibleness of the plant world. I don't like to have such a
human-centric view of the world, but it's hard not to feel like the
world was put together with our best possible health in mind when you
learn about how every single plant out there is somehow amazing for
us, specifically, in it's own different way. Even the most boring or
random seeming vegetables have amazing properties (parsley? radishes?
artichokes? you betcha!) So whatever you like, eat that! Lots of it!
For those of you
living somewhere cold, or who are in a hurry—frozen veggies are a
great alternative. They retain a lot of the beneficial anti-oxidants.
Canned, not so much, plus see above re: dangers of cans. Organic
vegetables are best, but the benefits of eating veggies are greater
than the risks of pesticide consumption (except in the case of GMOs!
see below), so better to eat the veggies than to hold out for
organic.
Genetically
modified foods are not safe. The fact that they are modified makes
them unsafe, increasing risk of allergic reaction and, as studies are
now showing, possibly causing organ failure; but on top of that, what
they modify them for, most often, is for the plants to be able to
withstand higher loads of pesticides and herbicides without dying. So
a GMO vegetable, or bean, or whatever, often has as much as five
times the load of carcinogenic chemicals as a normal non-organic item
(or in the case of soy, even higher levels). Things that, if they
aren't organic, are always going to be GMO in the US—potatoes,
corn, soy, tomatoes, and canola oil (I don't know if there's such a
thing as organic canola oil, but if so, stay away from that too.
Canola oil is no good!).
Pretty much every junk food is all GMO. Potato chips, anything with
corn syrup, and commercial tomato sauce, tofu from a cheap chinese
food place. If you can't stop eating junk food, at least stop
bringing home GMO veggies and cooking them into your healthy meals!
And finally, exercise.
To really get the
full cancer fighting benefit of being active you would need to do at
least 30 minutes of heart rate increasing activity a day. If you ride
your bike around somewhere flat all the time, it doesn't count. You
have to actually get sweaty and out of breath. Ideally, 45-60
minutes, five days a week. But anything is better than nothing—even
a little walking around is shown to be beneficial so do whatever you
can! But if you can get out there and run around or go swimming or
something... that's the best. Also it makes you feel really good.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, I may be
wrong, but I feel like I know what you're thinking. This is too much,
I can't do all this stuff! What am I supposed to eat? How can I live
my life? But it isn't that bad. You don't have to change everything
about your life to make improvements. Just do a little. Get some
glass jars and start using them instead of tupperware. Walk somewhere
instead of taking the bus, Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Cook more simple meals for yourself (a whole grain—rice, whatever—a
vegetable or two, and a bean of some kind—bean salad? Black beans?
Lentils? Tada! It's a meal.) or just add a vegetable to
whatever crappy thing you're eating. If you only do one thing, make
it vegetable eating! Or exercising.
And if you already
do all this and are ready for the advanced stuff, one last,
unpopular, item....
Alcohol is bad for you.
I'm sorry. No one
wants to hear it, and everyone just clings to the occasional study
showing that wine reduces risk of heart disease or whatever. But
there it is. Let me tell you about those studies the evening news is
always reporting on. They do studies on, say, the cell longevity
promoting properties in wine in an effort to find something they can
synthesize into the new miracle drug. Anytime they do a study on a
food or whatever, generally, it's a pharmaceutical company trying to
find a way to make a buck. It's not about the food or wine itself,
because that isn't something that can be patented so they don't care.
Anyway, so they find something, and release a preliminary finding
kind of thing, as a way of saying, buy our stock! We're about to find
the secret to eternal youth!
But the wine
itself doesn't do the things the study promises; they're speculating
that an incredibly concentrated version of a chemical found in the
wine would do that, under the right circumstances. To get that
benefit, you would have to drink something like six or seven bottles
of wine a day. Which would, of course, KILL YOU, because alcohol is bad for you! Sorry, but there you have it. Study after study has
shown increased consumption of any kind of alcoholic beverage to be
directly correlated with increased risk of many different kinds of cancers, especially hormone driven cancers.
If there's one
thing on this page I know about, it's this. I personally read all the
studies and pored over them for loopholes (a common practice in the
Breast Cancer survivor world by the way—not just poring over studies for
loopholes, but specifically the alcohol ones); the closest anyone has
been able to come is an Australian study showing a slightly less
elevated risk in people with high folate levels (obtained by eating
lots of vegetables). But the truth is this; anything over three
drinks a week is a huge risk factor and even that is iffy if you have
a family history. I know everyone is going to do what they're going
to do, and I know that what people want to do is keep right on
drinking; but you deserve to know.
Sorry. I mean, I
really am. I like being able to drink, a lot. It sucks. But there you
have it.
