Live right to help prevent colon cancer

GOT A MINUTE?

Live right to help prevent colon cancer

March 16, 2013 by Pam Maxson

If you are a regular exerciser (150 minutes per week minimum), eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day, rarely eat white bread, white pasta, or other refined grains, rarely eat sweets and red meat, are a non-smoker and maintain a healthy weight for your height, you are excused from reading this column.

Everyone else, take note, because we are going to discuss ways to prevent colorectal cancer.

As you have hopefully gathered from the previous articles on colorectal cancer this month, it is well worth your attention, time and effort to do what you can to prevent this type of cancer.

Because colorectal cancer is usually very slow-growing, one way to prevent it is to have regular colonoscopies if you are age 50 or older. The cancer very often arises from polyps ? little stalk-like growths ? that appear inside the colon. If these growths can be visualized and removed during a colonoscopy, then they never have the chance to become cancerous.

The rest of the recommended strategies to prevent colorectal cancer have to do with lifestyle factors. This means that what we put into our bodies and how much exercise we put out have a distinct influence over our chances for getting colon cancer.

Smoking is a risk factor for many cancers, colorectal included. According to the American Cancer Society, long-term smokers are more likely than non-smokers to develop and die from colorectal cancer. Smoking is a well-known cause of lung cancer, but some of the cancer-causing substances in smoke dissolve into saliva and when swallowed, can cause digestive system cancers like colorectal cancer.

If you are still with me, good for you!

I may have lost half my audience by writing about getting a colonoscopy and not smoking, two very scary prospects for some people. There is a reason I put those two things first; they are that important.

Here are a few more prevention guidelines:

• Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight and keep moving. Those two factors can significantly cut your colorectal cancer risk. The American Cancer Society recommends at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week ? 45 minutes is even better.
• Avoid red meat (beef, lamb, liver; some experts include pork in the red meat category) and processed meats, which are any meat that has been ground up, had other ingredients added to it, reshaped and given a name other than what the original meat was. Examples would be hot dogs, brats, bologna, salami and some other lunch meats.
• Get enough calcium. This mineral can significantly protect you from colon cancers and polyps, even if you have had them before. Calcium can be found in dairy products (choose low or nonfat items) broccoli, kale and canned salmon with the bones. Vitamin D helps our bodies absorb calcium and also seems to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. Milk is usually fortified with vitamin D, but if you don?t drink milk or eat much dairy, you might want to consider taking a calcium or Vitamin D supplement.
• Get plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Eat at least 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables for the fiber and antioxidant content. Taking fiber supplements doesn?t seem to have the same effect on reducing colon cancer risk as eating the fiber in foods.
• Limit alcohol intake to one drink per day for women, two for men. One drink is considered a 12-ounce beer or 4 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of liquor.
• Aspirin therapy may be helpful to cut the risk of polyps. Talk to your doctor about this, because there can be side effects from taking aspirin on a regular basis.

I know that much of what was included in this article is what many people just don?t want to hear: that we have a fair amount of control over our own health outcomes. But it takes some effort.

If you need motivation to make that effort, go back and read the first article in this series, about the ?Guy? who had colon cancer (you can find it on thelcn.com). That story is not exaggerated.

You. Don?t. Want. This. Cancer.

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Pam Maxson is a health educator at Noyes Hospital in Dansville. If you have questions or suggestions for future articles, she can be reached at pmaxson@noyes-hospital.org or 335-4327.

Source: http://thelcn.com/2013/03/16/live-right-to-help-prevent-colon-cancer/

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