Page 26 - The Lost Book of a Healthy Life

The Lost Book of a Healthy Life

drinking red wine, you can always substitute a tall glass of fresh purple grape juice – as

this drink is also associated with a lower risk of certain types of cancer).

Stress Management

Stress management has become a vital skill in the day and age of an unrelenting rat race,

financial stress, crowding, and traffic jams. Maybe we should take a page out of our
ancestor’s playbook and simplify things. Why does this have anything to do with cancer

prevention? Well, the argument is that stress leads to overeating, excess alcohol use, and

makes it harder to quit smoking – all habits associated with higher rates of cancer. So, by
getting off the hamster wheel and doing whatever you need to do to keep your stress to a

level that you can easily manage (without food, alcohol, or cigarettes), you might just be
making it harder for cancer to show up and stick around.

Sleep

Sleep is important for maintaining health for several reasons – it keeps your immune
system working, reduces inflammation, and helps regulate your weight. And that’s why

sleep gone wrong is associated with an increased risk of cancer. For example, shift work
has been associated with increased rates of breast cancer. One theory is that by disturbing

sleep, the body’s hormones also get disturbed, increasing the risk that breast cells will
become cancerous. Lack of sleep has also been linked to prostate and colon cancer. More

indirectly, a lack of sleep can increase the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes, two
conditions that are linked to higher rates of cancer. Getting enough sleep also keeps our

immune system in working order. This is relevant to cancer prevention because your
immune system plays a role in detecting (and neutralizing) precancerous cells. Chronic

inflammation, a process linked to increased rates of cancer, also goes up when we don’t

get enough sleep. Clearly, there are all sorts of very good reasons for making time to get
enough sleep.

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