Following a healthy diet, keeping up with regular physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight can lower your risk of developing cancer. These three elements make up the “cancer prevention trio”. They are strongly connected, and often enough, when you work on improving one it leads to improvements in the other two.

Eat a healthy diet
To lower your risk of cancer, make your diet more Mediterranean and build it around a variety of fruits and vegetables that are rich in antioxidants and fiber. Go for whole grains and healthy fats, and limit your consumption of refined carbs and processed food. But choosing healthy food is not the only important factor in preventing cancer, you should also be smart in the way you prepare and cook your meals. 

– Wash all fruits and vegetables before eating them to reduce pesticide residue from them.
– Eat raw fruits and vegetables to make the most of their vitamins and minerals.
– When you boil vegetables, use the cooking water in soup to get vitamins from it.
– Use herbs and spices that boost your immune system with their cancer-fighting properties, such as garlic, ginger, basil, coriander, and turmeric.
– Avoid cooking oils on high heat to prevent them from turning carcinogenic.

Be physically active
Studies have found that moderate to vigorous physical activity can reduce the risk of breast cancer. Moderate activity can be translated by a brisk walk, whereas vigorous activity means when you get your heart rate and breathing up. 

Here are some tips to achieve the recommendation to get 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity every day:
– Find a friend to be your walking partner, this way you can motivate each other.
– Don’t let the weather be an excuse, if it’s raining, walk in the mall.
– Sign up at the gym and join group exercises such as pilates or Zumba.

Alongside being physically active, it’s very important to avoid the sedentary lifestyle that we all seem to fall into. Spending hours in front of a computer or TV can be detrimental to your physical wellbeing even if you are exercising; so try to move around the office every hour, take the stairs, walk around while making phone calls, anything that can get you moving during the day. 

Control your weight
Being overweight, or even underweight can increase the risk of many cancers including breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Make sure you have a healthy BMI by scheduling your appointment with Dietitian Christelle Bedrossian today. 

Studies have shown that up to 30% of cancers can be prevented if people applied this prevention trio into their lifestyles and maintained healthy habits!

Christelle Bedrossian
Dietitian-Nutritionist
Beirut, Lebanon