It is estimated that 60-70% of cancers can be prevented by the implementation of simple changes in one’s diet and lifestyle. Below are a few recommendations that have been shown to help prevent cancer and also promote overall health and wellbeing.

1. Increase amounts of fruits and vegetables (organic when possible.) Most of the fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store are laced with hazardous chemicals. However, fruits and vegetables also contain bioflvinoids, which are known to have anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. Because plants create oxygen as a by-product of harnessing the suns’ energy through photosynthesis, they have to develop powerful anti-oxidant defenses to combat the lethal combination of sunlight and oxygen (a recipe for free radicals.) The anti-oxidant substances used by plants to control free radicals work exactly equally in the human body.

2. Enjoy vegetable fats (such as those found in nuts and olive oil) and reduce intake of saturated and trans fats often found in meat and processed foods. Head researchers on a new study on prostate cancer published in JAMA, June 2013, concluded,” If you eat the right kind of fat, you are less likely to die of not only prostate cancer, but really, of any cause.”

3. Avoid excess weight gain. Those who are 40% overweight have a much higher risk of developing cancer.

4. Increase fiber intake. A high fiber diet helps remove toxins from the body. Low fiber and high animal fat diets have been implicated in cancer of the colon. This is another reason to increase the amount of fresh vegetables and fruit in our diet.

5. Favor fresh foods. Avoid processed foods and artificial sweeteners.

6 Add turmeric to your diet. Turmeric has been shown to protect the DNA of the cells and to stimulate detoxifying enzymes. Turmeric also has anti-inflammatory properties and increases the anti-cancer properties of other phyto-chemicals (plant chemicals). This is just a sampling of the many beneficial properties of this wonderful spice.

7. Avoid eating meat (this includes lean meats and chicken.) Every cell in a piece of meat and chicken contains a membrane that controls what goes in and out of the cell. This membrane is made up mostly of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Not only are polyunsaturated fats easily oxidized (creating free radicals), they are also storehouses for fat-soluble carcinogens and chemicals, such as many pesticides and herbicides. When you eat meat, ingesting these chemical-concentrated fats, the chemicals then become stored in your body fat, attaching to the DNA structure.

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you have already heard about the research that Robert Herron, Ph.D. conducted on the Ayurveda purification therapies (panchakarma) offered at Raj, Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center in Fairfield, IA.

The study, published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine in 2002, showed that levels of fat-soluble toxins could be reduced by about 50% through a 5-day treatment program. The reason I keep bringing up this study is that there exists no other proven method of removing these kinds of fat-soluble chemicals from the body.  Western medicine offers no solution beyond letting nature take its course.  These toxins are know to have a half-life of anywhere from 7 to 30 years. This means it takes 7 to 30 years for the quantity to fall to half its value — to achieve a 50% reduction. The results of this study came after only five days of treatment.

There are a wide variety of detox programs available today that can remove water-soluble toxins and even heavy metals. Panchakarma, however, is the only proven means of removing fat-soluble toxins.

Whatever foods you may have eaten in the past, it is reassuring to know that you can undo many of the negative effects of those foods and start fresh on a new path of good health.

To learn more about Panchakarma visit

www.theraj.com

(Photo of Fruits and Vegetables Basket. Source: National Cancer Insitute, an agency part of the National Institutes of Health via Wikimedia Commons. The image is used under the terms of Wikimedia Commons rules: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing. This photograph and credit do not constitute an endorsement of this blog or products mentioned.)