If you adopt the following healthy habits, you’ll significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer, study shows.
Many believe reducing the risk of breast cancer should be at the forefront of people’s minds rather than the focus solely being on early detection, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery that often leaves women feeling self-conscious.
The word cancer terrifies most people. What if there was a way to help prevent the disease from ever developing within your body? The presence of breast cancer in Europe is high.
Changes in your lifestyle reduce the risk of breast cancer
A study was published a few years ago that suggested changes to lifestyle factors significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer by sixty percent. This is a fact that is not known by the general population unless they have a vested interest in cancer preventative measures.
Perhaps because of this, these lifestyle changes should be published on consumer items such as fizzy drinks, processed meats, fried food, and cigarette packets?
The data that was collected during the study came from 370,000 subjects over nine countries in Europe.
This study followed the participants for over twelve years, the study gathered information on diet, physical activity, and weight management. They took this information and correlated it with the development of breast cancer and other diseases.
Afterward, they found that the people who followed the lifestyle recommendations for good health had lower risks of cancer and death, and in particular breast cancer. They actually found it was a 60% reduction in the development of breast cancer.
Which habits you should adopt to reduce the risk
Below are the recommendations to be made for a cancer prevention lifestyle:
- Maintain a healthy weight for your own body type but do not fall underweight.
- Undertake physical activity for at least thirty minutes every day.
- Do not consume sugary drinks.
- Do not consume energy-dense foods.
- Eat a large variety of vegetables and in particular whole grains such as beans, peas, and lentils.
- Limit the consumption of red meat to under a pound a week.
- Avoid all processed meat.
- Limit the consumption of alcohol to two drinks for men and one for women per day.
- Limit the consumption of foods with high salt content. As well as processed foods that contain a lot of salts particularly things such as crisps and cheese.
- Do not bother using supplements that claim to protect and prevent against cancer as they have not been proven to work.
- Breastfeeding mothers should try to breastfeed for at least six months to reduce the possibility of premenopausal breast cancer.
If you are a cancer survivor, it’s important to follow the cancer prevention recommendations in the long term.
The cancer prevention lifestyle recommendations were drawn from the WCRF/AICR Second Expert Report, which took over six years to put together.
The month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, instead of buying pink things, try to incorporate as many of these lifestyle habits as possible.
There are lots of new developments in breast cancer treatment, but if you can follow the above recommendations they will have an impact on avoiding the disease entirely.
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