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Can­cer pre­ven­tion with diet and lifestyle

Posted by in Prävention

Although the impor­tance of nutri­tion for phys­i­cal well-being has been known since ancient times, it often only plays a sub­or­di­nate role in mod­ern soci­ety. Accord­ing to Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Med­i­cine (TCM), the best pre­ven­tion is 80 per­cent lifestyle includ­ing diet, 10 per­cent acupunc­ture, and 10 per­cent herbal med­i­cine. This is of course only one approach, but the num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles and find­ings on the pos­i­tive effects of nutri­tion and lifestyle on health and on can­cer pre­ven­tion has also increased con­tin­u­ous­ly in recent years.

Lifestyle fac­tors

A good lifestyle takes into account how care­ful­ly we live our dai­ly lives, how we get up in the morn­ing, what we eat and many oth­er fac­tors such as exer­cise, deal­ing with work and oth­er peo­ple, fam­i­ly ties, faith and reli­gion, fear and atti­tude towards ill­ness and death . And of course how we go to sleep in the evening.

Sci­en­tists from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty (USA) found that up to ten years of life can be gained if you live healthy in your 50s. How it works? Through risk-min­i­miz­ing fac­tors, peo­ple have the influ­ence in their own hands. It is a well-known fact that peo­ple who live a healthy life devel­op chron­ic dis­eases such as dia­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases or can­cer much later.

The US sci­en­tists defined the fol­low­ing lifestyle fac­tors as a mea­sure of a healthy lifestyle:

  • nev­er smoker
  • BMI 18,5–24,9 kg/m2
  • dai­ly exer­cise (≥ 30 min)
  • qual­i­ty nutrition
  • mod­er­ate alco­hol con­sump­tion (women 5–15 g/day, men 5–30 g/day)

If four of the five lifestyle fac­tors were tak­en into account, the aver­age dis­ease-free life expectan­cy was 31.1 years. And that with a study group of 50-year-old Amer­i­cans. Diet prob­a­bly plays the most impor­tant role in the area of lifestyle factors.

Food for health

Can­cer is a wide­spread dis­ease that puts a strain on those affect­ed, their fam­i­lies and the entire health­care sys­tem. This dis­ease often caus­es com­plete upheavals in the patient’s life as well as enor­mous eco­nom­ic costs for soci­ety. How­ev­er, around 50% of glob­al cas­es could be avoid­ed through improved indi­vid­ual lifestyle. There­fore, in par­tic­u­lar, the bal­anced diet needs a new
assigned impor­tance in order to pro­tect health and pre­vent diseases.

One of the most impor­tant orga­ni­za­tions in the field of can­cer pre­ven­tion through nutri­tion and lifestyle is the inter­na­tion­al­ly active WCRF (World Can­cer Research Fund). A lifestyle that fol­lows the WCRF rec­om­men­da­tions pro­motes can­cer pre­ven­tion and thus health. A mind­ful lifestyle enables the avoid­ance of can­cer and oth­er chron­ic dis­eases (non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases; NCDs). Although almost every­one knows that can­cer is one of the biggest caus­es of death in Ger­many (with about 25% in sec­ond place), only a frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion adheres to sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed recommendations.

These 10 WCRF rec­om­men­da­tions help reduce your own risk of cancer:

  1. Main­tain a healthy weight / stay slim
  2. Lots of exercise
  3. Veg­eta­bles, fruits, beans and whole grains
  4. Reduce fast food and soft drinks
  5. Reduce red and processed meat
  6. Lit­tle alcohol
  7. No nutri­tion­al supplement
  8. Do not smoke
  9. For moth­ers: breast­feed if possible
  10. Go to the doc­tor, fol­low rec­om­men­da­tions after diagnosis

(Coun­sel­ing Cen­ter for Nutri­tion Munich 2019)

Orig­i­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the 10 rec­om­men­da­tions for can­cer pre­ven­tion of the WCRF. Source: World Can­cer Research Fund

There is an urgent need to make can­cer pre­ven­tion a more social issue. Healthy diet and lifestyle mea­sures should be pro­mot­ed. Because the top­ic of nutri­tion is also a cen­tral aspect in life. Sup­port­ing treat­ment, regain­ing ener­gy, main­tain­ing health after ther­a­py, enjoy­ing cook­ing and eat­ing despite lim­i­ta­tions… the list of mean­ings for every­day life with can­cer is long.

Gyne­col­o­gy and nutrition

Gyne­col­o­gists look after women of all ages and are the only group of spe­cial­ists who have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence the health of their patients in every phase of life. Ide­al­ly, edu­ca­tion about healthy eat­ing, obe­si­ty and the con­se­quences begins dur­ing the girls’ consultation.

Sources:

Tra­di­tionelle chi­ne­sis­che Medi­zin, Dr. med. Georg Wei­dinger
https://www.amazon.de/Die-Heilung-Mitte-Traditionellen-Chinesischen/dp/385068864X

Li Y et al. BMJ 2020; 368: l6669;
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.l6669

BERATUNGSSTELLE FÜR ERNÄHRUNG München
https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/501776

Was hat Frauen­heilkunde mit Ernährungsmedi­zin zu tun?, GENOGYN.de
https://genogyn.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/GenoGyn_gg1807.pdf

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