Monday, June 16, 2008

Your Lifestyle,Your Genes, and Cancer

Instapundit has a interesting article linked from Newsweek:
What is it about our lifestyle that raises the risk of many types of cancer? The main culprits seem to be the Western diet, obesity and physical inactivity. While we've known about the importance of tobacco and cancer for more than 50 years, we are just beginning to understand how diet, a healthy body weight and regular exercise can protect us against cancer.

A striking example of the profound influence of diet was reported last summer in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Doctors determined the eating habits of patients with colon cancer in the years following surgical removal of the cancer. Over the next five years, those who ate a traditional Western diet had a threefold greater likelihood of developing a recurrence of the disease than did those who ate a "prudent" diet rich in fruits and vegetables and including only small amounts of red meat.