The Mighty Cancer-Fighting Diet

Life has been throwing a lot of cancer curve balls lately.  

I'm sure you can relate.  It's rare that people don't know at least one person battling this terrible disease. For me, both relatives and friends have been duking it out with cancer in recent history.  It's a disease that doesn't distinguish between young or old, healthy or not healthy, rich or poor.  Rather, it can happen to anyone at anytime. And it hits like a ton of bricks.

For some reason, I feel responsible to myself and to the people I know struggling with this disease to inform and educate both myself and the people that read this blog. While there's no magic cure for cancer, there are things that we can and should be doing to protect our bodies.  

The most basic way to do this is by monitoring all things ingested. Here are my personal thoughts and the thoughts of a great deal of research: The best medicine in the fight against cancer is food. It should be viewed as fuel for our bodies, not as a reward.  Doing so can make a world of difference. 

I've been doing a lot of reading on cancer-fighting foods (and on foods linked to cancer), and I've found a very straightforward food list I want to share with you. The article is called the 27 Top Cancer-Fighting Foods. Here is the list from the article below. 

• Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Carrots, Kale, Mushrooms, Seaweed, Sweet potatoes, Avocados, Chili peppers, Figs, Grapefruits, Grapes, Oranges, Lemons, Papayas, Raspberries, Tomatoes, Flax, Nuts, Garlic, Rosemary, Tapioca, Tumeric, Red wine, Soy products, Green tea and black tea

Here are some other tips I've gathered through my research:

• Eat at least some raw foods.  In your free time, google "raw food diet."  There's some excellent nutritional value in eating raw foods. 
• Thoroughly wash all produce and buy organic whenever possible to eliminate the amounts of pesticides and harmful chemicals ingested. 
• Drink water and a lot of it.
• Good, healthy fats are those that are liquid at room temperature (think olive oil).  These are unsaturated fats. Use these and avoid  saturated fats (think french fries at McDonald's).
• Consider a vegan diet or vegetarian diet that's low in dairy.
• Eat more fiber!

By contrast, there are TONS of foods that are linked to cancer. While there's a running joke that "anything can cause cancer," that's simply not true. Just do a simple google search - perhaps "foods linked to cancer" and see what comes up.  In my quick search, red meat, processed meat, fried food, french fries, foods with environmental chemicals, foods high in salt, saturated and trans fats have all been linked to various types of cancer. These are all things I avoid like the plague in my diet even though I'm tempted to eat them at times (who isn't?!).