Dr. Wascher: Cut Your Cancer Risk With Smart Lifestyle Choices

While important breakthroughs in molecularly targeted cancer treatments offer promising news for cancer patients, banishing tobacco use still would have the most important effect on cutting cancer risk and death, says Dr. Robert Wascher, senior surgical oncologist at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Phoenix.

�If you eliminated tobacco from society today, that would by far have the greatest impact on reducing cancer risk and cancer-associated death,� Wascher, author of �A Cancer Prevention Guide for the Human Race,� tells Newsmax Health.

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Wascher�s comments follow the recent meeting of members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, where studies of drug therapies for patients with advanced melanoma, lung, and ovarian malignancies were presented and showed the treatment helped cancer sufferers live significantly longer.

The drugs, which target individual genes in cancer cells, are the future of cancer treatment, but diet and lifestyle choices � like not smoking � can have significant impact on the risk of getting cancer in the first place, he says. Ninety percent of lung cancers are due to tobacco use, which is the No. 1 cause of cancer death, he explains.

Other lifestyle decisions, like choosing to cut back on eating meat and animal fats, reducing alcohol consumption, and adopting a Mediterranean-style diet also will help reduce cancer risk. Such an eating plan also helps cut your chances of getting cardiovascular disease and diabetes, he says. It includes eating:

� Fresh fruits

� Tree nuts

� Olive oil

� Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, and cauliflower

� Little meat and processed foods

While dietary supplements are a huge industry in the United States � raking in $100 billion a year for manufacturers of the products � large clinical research trials of antioxidant vitamins and supplements like vitamins C and A, beta carotene, and selenium show no benefit in their prevention of cancer and heart disease, he notes.

However, there are some vitamins and supplements that do show potential as �cancer-prevention agents,� he says. Those are:

� Vitamin D

� Tumeric (curry spice)

� Cruciferous vegetables

� Soybean-derived products

� Resveratrol (compound in grapes and other red and purple fruits)

�Most nutritionists believe that these substances are probably most likely to be effective when taken as part of a balanced diet and maybe less effective when taken as pill form and capsule form,� he says.

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